An outtake is a portion of a work (usually a film or music recording) that is removed in the editing process and not included in the work's final, publicly released version. In the digital era significant outtakes have been appended to CD and DVD reissues of many albums and films as bonus tracks or features.

In film

An outtake can be a take or scene, as of a movie, or a television program, that is filmed but not used in the final cut, usually for "pacing" reasons. Some of these are humorous mistakes (commonly known to American audiences as bloopers). An outtake may also be a complete version of a recording that is dropped in favour of another version.

Often outtakes can be found as special features on DVDs. Outtakes can also be found playing over credits at the end of a film or TV program. Well known examples of this are Jackie Chan and Pixar movies, almost all of which play outtakes at the end of the movie.

In music

Just like a movie outtake, music outtakes are recordings that are not used in a final version of an album. Collections of this sort of material is often compiled and distributed illegally by fans, and known as a bootleg recording. Sometimes, artists release collections of outtakes, sometimes grouped with other rarities such as demos and unreleased songs.

Occasionally collections of outtakes become recognized as part of an artist's major creative output, especially in cases where an artist is unusually prolific or dies young. An example of the former is the seven-volume Bootleg Series from Bob Dylan, which contains many important Dylan songs omitted from his albums, some of which were made famous by other artists. An example of the latter is the CD Time of No Reply by Nick Drake, a British singer-songwriter who died almost unknown at the age of 26 in 1974, but whose music became highly influential on other artists in subsequent decades.