VCR to VCD

[upgrade99]

Hope this is the right Forum.
I am trying to copy a Video to VCD.
Copying the Video to the hard drive is no problem as it saves as AVI and all looks and sounds perfect.
Problems start when I convert it to Mpeg.
I loose a lot of colour it almost looks black or should I say grey
and white.
I have tried a lot of different progs to eliminate this but to no avail
has anybody got suggestions on how to correct this problem.
Many thanx in advance.