clipping

In digital video, the state of an image with a color gamut that falls outside of the minimum and maximum level that can be represented in a color space. For example, when a Rec. 2020 source image is converted to Rec. 709, the image may appear “clipped” (colors muted or over- or underexposed when compared with the original) because the smaller target color space (Rec. 709) cannot reproduce the detail in the image’s original color space (Rec. 2020). Clipping can occur in any color channel of an image.

In digital audio, clipping describes a signal that exceeds the maximum sample value of 0 dBFS during playback or recording, resulting in audio distortion.