It started off as an idea. I had recently got back from working on a BBC project that had lasted two weeks. Everyday I made a menu for the shows that was made up of short video clips with a ball wiping in the next item. Anybody who has tried to do this in FCP will know how cumbersome & time consuming it is. It involves stacking up tracks, using a key and fill and then overlaying the moving object.

OK I've seen enough already take me to the SupaWipe site now!

Being an editor I suppose one skill you need is timing and this is where I got it all wrong! On the day after I finished that job I thought "This would be so much easier to do with a plugin" and thus the idea for SupaWipe was born.

Getting a first version up and running was fairly easy and indeed this was used on the ITV's coverage of the Tour de France over the summer. It was good and bad though. The bad news was that it was obvious it needed some extra image processing to render fields correctly to give the objects a smooth motion across the screen. What was good though was all the interest from the other editors that saw the effect. "Can you put it on my machine?" was the request. There was definitely a market for this plugin.

if you have ever written software of any type you will know that sometimes things are completely out of your control. This is exactly what happened to the development of SupaWipe over the next few months. Apple decided to introduce some upgrades to FCP & Motion which broke a lot of the functionality when it comes to plugins. Couple this with a million to one chance of the FxFactory code clashing with the P2 import function within FCP and you can see that valuable resources had to be employed elsewhere. Now, add that with work requirements and you find that time soon slips away.

When you get a product to the stage you think it's ready for the world, the dreaded T word appears over the horizon. Yes, testing. This wouldn't be so bad but right at this moment there are so many variations of software & hardware to consider. First of all you have Intel & PPC, then Tiger & Leopard. This is before you get onto the FCP versions and graphics cards installed. Luckily we have a group of small & trustworthy beta testers and with yours truly up till three in the morning most nights, eventually we had the thing nailed.

The big day of the launch came on the 29th of January and we haven't looked back since. It seems we have a hit on our hands! So a quick thankyou to all involved in helping getting this thing off the ground. It's been a long road, but a very worthwhile journey!

If you haven't tried Supawipe for FCP & FCE, there is a 15 day free trial , have fun!