This distortion is also known as crosstalk or cross-modulation. Splice is present when luminance amplitude is affect by the superimposed chrominance. The luminance change may be caused by clipping of high-amplitude chrominance peaks, quadrature distortion or crosstalk. The modulated pedestal is used to test for this distortion. Distortions can be expressed as: IRE with the pedestal level normalised to 50 IRE, as a percentage of the pedestal level, as a percentage of the measured white bar amplitude, as a percentage of 714 mV.

These definitions will yield different results under some conditions so it is very important to standardise on a single method of making intermodulation measurements. Picture effects include unwarranted brightness variations due to colour saturation changes affecting the luminance.