Wipe

A wipe is an editing transition in which the incoming shot appears to sweep across the frame from one edge to another, replacing the outgoing shot as the edge moves. Unlike a cut (instantaneous) or a dissolve (simultaneous blending), a wipe has a definite edge — a moving boundary that sweeps in a specific direction (left to right, right to left, top to bottom, diagonal) or pattern (radial, iris, star, clock wipe) across the frame, with the outgoing image on one side of the edge and the incoming image on the other. When the edge completes its traverse from one side of the frame to the other, the transition is complete and only the incoming shot remains.

Wipes carry specific narrative connotations developed through decades of cinema convention. In classic Hollywood and early television, a horizontal wipe (a vertical edge sweeping left to right) conventionally signals a passage of time or a geographic transition — "now we're somewhere else." The iris wipe (a circle expanding or contracting in the center of the frame) was a signature of silent film. The Star Wars franchise famously uses wipe transitions consistently and deliberately as a stylistic signature — their geometric wipes (horizontal, diagonal, radial) became so associated with the series that they read as intentional film language rather than arbitrary transition choices. George Lucas used them as a deliberate homage to 1930s serials.

For contemporary B2B and professional video production, wipe transitions require significant contextual justification. Simple cuts and dissolves are the appropriate defaults for nearly all content, and elaborate wipes carry strong aesthetic connotations: they either read as retro (classic Hollywood), stylistically committed (the Star Wars use), or — most commonly — as the default output of someone who opened their NLE's "transitions panel" and applied whatever looked dynamic. The practical guideline is that any transition that draws attention to itself as a transition (rather than serving the content's flow) needs to justify that attention with a clear creative reason. Wipes are distinctive enough that using one says something about the aesthetic of the video; using them without intention says something unflattering about the editorial judgment.