Why is my picture black and white?
 

I recently bought a clone ATI 600 capture device with the intent of using it along with my tv-ONE TBC to preserve my rare vhs tapes.
I tested it out on some tapes I had recorded from the early 2000s and they captured the picture just fine, even if the cropping was a bit off.
However the moment I tried to capture a specific tape from the 80s, the picture would only display in black and white and nothing I did could fix it.
Can someone please tell me what I must do to fix it?

So it's just the one tape?
Are you sure it's not B&W?
Are you sure you didn't accidentally change any settings on the TBC?
Is the tape PAL or NTSC, or something else?

Sorry for the exorbitantly long wait. I haven't had time to experiment with my conversion setup in the lead up to Christmas. But so far I think I've established that the colour problem is not with the drive itself, but with the S video cables. They're not connecting properly for some reason and I have to mangle and bend them in awkward ways just to get the picture to display in colour for only a few seconds. Does anyone know of any S video connections that won't have this problem?

Off course, very common problem with S-Video connectors, Replace the cable if the problem exists you will have to open up the VCR and re-solder the S-Video socket legs on the PCB board, I've done a lot of them, some are easy, some are a pain, depends on the VCR model.

Ah, yes, very common. I've done this myself once or twice over the year. The reason it happens is overly using the s-video connection. Push, pull, push, pull. This is why I use s-video extenders now, rarely have to touch the actual VCR in/outs. B&W is a symptom of it being only slightly bad, whereas more often the signal is entirely messed up.

It's usually the connections, not the s-video cable. But the cable is possible.