Digital-8 camcorders are capable of playing back from both Digital-8 and analog Hi-8 videocassettes. If you connect to a PAL Digital-8 camcorder via FireWire when a Hi-8 tape is inserted, you will find that the camcorder is inappropriately recognized as NTSC instead of PAL.
As a result, a PAL setting will not show up in the Source popup, accessed by the Video button in the Capture Preferences tab.
To avoid this situation, use Digital-8 tapes instead.