[Mark Dobson] "I guess that as always what the client wants to see is the finished programme and is hiring a professional editor to get the best job done to the highest technical standard."
Correct, although I have often been hired by some clients based on specific software. That's usually for reasons of compatibility with some internal requirement or existing work. In this case, you have to envision the edit suite environment - edit console with a 30" ADC, a 17" TV Logic and a 50" Panasonic plasma on the wall. The two monitors are fed by a BMD card. The client is at the opposite side of the room on a sofa. From their point-of-view, the main interaction with visuals is what they see on the plasma. They aren't sitting in front of the GUI like I am. As long as I am able to quickly give them what they want, when they ask for suggestions, changes, etc., then one piece of software is really no different than another. If anything, it would be , "Oh, that screen looks darker than I remembered. Is that new?" The question never came up, though.
[Mark Dobson] "Well that's a pretty beefy set up."
True, though performance on my home system (2.26Ghz 8-core, 16GB RAM, ATI5870, internal drives) is pretty similar. As I may have posted elsewhere, performance on a friend's top-of-the-line iMac with a Promise RAID is even better. Remember, though, that I was essentially "offline editing" with full-quality ProResHQ 1080p/23.98 media.
[Mark Dobson] "From your blog it seems the complicated parts of the job were involved in getting the material in and out of FCPX in a way that other systems could also work on the material, color correction etc.
And that the actual edit itself went pretty smoothly apart from the SAN issues. "
This is absolutely true. It's also my reason for posting the blog. FCP X works well in a closed environment, but that's not realistic for a lot of pro workflows. I hesitate to call this high-end (even though the process is) because these aren't even national TV spots. Though I tend to do my own color grading on most projects, a lot of the rest of this is standard procedure for me on nearly every job I do.
- Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com 
