A wipe is a Scene Transition in which one scene overlaps another, often appearing to physically "push" the frame over. One of the old classics. Can be horizontal, vertical, diagonal, radial, or otherwise. In the digital era, wipes are effortless, and the boundary between the scenes need no longer be straight.
A radial wipe to black produces the Iris Out effect. Much like the way beginning digital graphic artists abuse Photoshop filters, overuse of wipes is a trademark of an inexperienced editor in love with his equipment: see an episode of The Simpsons for an example ("And star wipe to Flanders...")
An MTV Wayne's World special featured a performance of a song by Wayne and Garth that included a "switcher solo" featuring a multitude of wipes as a joke (albeit one that only people with a certain amount of knowledge of video production will get).
Some series have unique scene transitions that represent a point of style. See Idiosyncratic Wipes.
If you were looking for the other kind of wipe, which happens in MMORPGs, see Total Party Kill.
Examples:
Films — Live-Action
- A New Hope : After their emergency landing on Tattooine, C-3PO and R2 wander through the desert in the hopes of finding Obi-Wan. The scene is quickly cut away by means of a wipe to a shot of an Imperial Destroyer looming menacingly over Tattooine's space orbit.
Western Animation
- Family Guy: The Star Wars parodies in the show use this technique as a copy of George Lucas' cinematographic style.
