I'm just starting out with the QHY8 as well.
Loaded the QHY drivers first to try the supplied software
Astrowin but it had a tendency to lock up.
Now I'm running with the Astrosoft drivers and Nebulosity from Stark Labs, all seems good. Busy at home this cloudy night taking darks with the black cap on.
Nebulosity has a 'binning' mode, uses a square of 4 pixels (2x2?) to create a 1.5MP image. 4x4 binning does imply 16 pixels for a 750k image doesn't it?
For gain/offset, I found a rough guide on the QHY forum,
http://www.lightstorm.at/pdfs/ and click on QHY8_settings.pdf
I've been setting the gain to 30, and then taking bias frames and varying the offset until the average pixel value is between 500 and 1000. Getting under the stars will be the real test.
How is your QHY8 with respect to dust and hot pixels? Mine came in the dry case with the filter/nosepiece unscrewed and was fairly dusty, blew as much as I could off with a blower bulb but I'm not brave enough to wipe it down with anything. Observed a few hot pixels, I need to do some calibrated darks and map them.
Cheers,
Rob