[quote="Bob Ennis"]I have actually found the heart wipe to be very useful - but not as a wipe. Using just part of the pattern makes a great mask for certain graphics & chroma keys in place of using 2 circles. Playing with the aspect & morphig it with other patterns makes a pretty convincing looking hot-air balloon, for example. Put through a DVE an stamped in a concentric circular pattern with a washed matte-fill, a heart wipe can be used to make a convincing flower. But on my show I still use the switcher to create graphics "out of nothing", and I realize that most people don't have to do that anymore. The original SONY 8000 (a 2 1/2-M/E switcher from about 10 years ago) had 2 heart wipe patterns - one was the left side of the heart, and the other was the right side. Each half had a serrated line at the center - I assume that the object was to use the left & right sides to either break a heart or to make a broken heart whole. Those were the only 2 wipes that I've ever seen on any switcher that were (in my opinion) completly useless...with all of the time & effort that the software engineers put into programming wipe patterns, I was always asking myself "what were they thinking?"[/quote] I think for the first time I disgaree with Bob :) I can honestly say when I worked at MSNBC I had been asked to build a broken heart effect I would say atleast 3-4 times, easy. Maybe more. Usually entertainment driven by a couple that broke up. Not sure we ever got it to look great, that sony wipe would have actually helped :) We tried having gfx build two seperate elements but usually when put together they made too much of an outline with the cracked edge and you couldn't hide it to make it a full heart before cracking it. I can recall trying to do it with a wipe pattern with a jagged edge, no good. Best we got was having a full heart dissolve quickly to the DVEous that had the 2 stills and then rotate them apart. Cheesy but worked. As was the norm on these things at that network, we usually got the elements no more then an hour or two before air, so it never was well planned, then again nothing there was ever well planned :) So I wish the GVG engineers had that wipe in the 4K, would have been nice ..

[quote="Bob Ennis"]Those were the only 2 wipes that I've ever seen on any switcher that were (in my opinion) completly useless...with all of the time & effort that the software engineers put into programming wipe patterns, I was always asking myself "what were they thinking?"[/quote] The only show I've seen that gets away with using those wipes historically was The Price is Right, even at that they still kept things pretty basic.

I have actually found the heart wipe to be very useful - but not as a wipe. Using just part of the pattern makes a great mask for certain graphics & chroma keys in place of using 2 circles. Playing with the aspect & morphig it with other patterns makes a pretty convincing looking hot-air balloon, for example. Put through a DVE an stamped in a concentric circular pattern with a washed matte-fill, a heart wipe can be used to make a convincing flower. But on my show I still use the switcher to create graphics "out of nothing", and I realize that most people don't have to do that anymore. The original SONY 8000 (a 2 1/2-M/E switcher from about 10 years ago) had 2 heart wipe patterns - one was the left side of the heart, and the other was the right side. Each half had a serrated line at the center - I assume that the object was to use the left & right sides to either break a heart or to make a broken heart whole. Those were the only 2 wipes that I've ever seen on any switcher that were (in my opinion) completly useless...with all of the time & effort that the software engineers put into programming wipe patterns, I was always asking myself "what were they thinking?"

Yup. I'm pretty proud of the one I made, actually. On my Ross board, I saved it as a sequence, which the heart beat three times before it flies and disappears from the screen. It's a cheesy wipe, but hey, if I'm going to create one from scratch, I might as well have fun with it, right? Anyway, the wife thought it was cool.

Used one for the Tease & Rollout! even used the "multi" in the wipe options menu to create a medley of hearts for a backround...very sexy! :O

Yes. Had 3 VOs showing Valentine's Day stuff from around the country, so I got to 'heart wipe' twice. ;-) Matt

haha...funny you should mention that lou...I used a heart wipe at the end of our weekly magazine show today...when the director ask for it I had to double check and make sure he really wanted to use it :)

just my slate to black