Need Help Capturing From VCR

I'd like to copy some VCR tapes to DVD and I just can't figure it out. I need help. I figure I'm somehow conceptually lacking something.

I cannot get my system to recognize the connection to the VCR. I have a dual boot system and I've tried with both XP and Linux. I, of course, prefer to do this in Linux.

I'm running Mandrake 10.0 and the 2.4.22 version of the Linux kernel. My system is an HP Media Center PC 873n. My video card is a NV17 GeForce4 MX 420. The card has a coaxial in connector, an S-Video in connector, and two sound in connectors.

My VCR does NOT have an S-Video out connector, but I have a composite-to-S-Video adaptor. I've tried connecting the coaxial-out on the VCR to the coaxial-in on the GeForce card, and I've tried connecting the composite-out on the VCR to the S-Video-in (with the use of the adaptor) on the GeForce card. I've tried this both in XP and in Linux.

In Linux I've tried running kdetv-0.8.7, xawdecode-1.9.2, xawtv-3.92, tvtime-0.9.14, xdtv-2.0.1, xvidcap-1.1.3, nvrec-20030316, mjpegtools-1.6.2 (lavrec), and dvgrab-1.8, none of them seemingly being able to see the VCR.

When running "xawtv -hwscan" I get: port 105-105 type : Xvideo, image scaler name : NV17 Video Overlay port 106-106 type : Xvideo, image scaler name : NV17 Video Texture port 107-138 type : Xvideo, image scaler name : NV05 Video Blitter port 139-139 -xvport 139 type : Xvideo, video overlay name : NVIDIA Video Interface Port

So, it seems that xawtv sees the NVIDIA card but running "xawtv -xvport 139" does no good.

My system out of the box does not have thedev-video,dev-video0, ordev-v4l-* devices. I'm under the impression that the kernel contains v4l code. Is this true? I've tried creatingdev-v4l-* devices, as well asdev-video and linking it todev-nvidia0 to no avail.

I've tried reading all the help pages that I can find. Nothing seems to help.

Can someone here help me?