Looking at my current, eclectic skills set after six years of Final Cut Pro, the program is still at the heart of my workflow. However I increasingly need to augment it with the likes of Aperture, Captain FTP, Compressor, DVD Studio Pro, Fireworks, Live Type, Motion, Rapid Weaver, RWmultiTool, Text Wrangler and Wordpress to name but a few.

Learning to edit on an ancient Steenbeck editing table 10 years ago, provided me with a rock solid foundation for my current skills set. Back then most of the programs that I´m using today would have been unthinkable! Yes, Avid was in it´s infancy, there was a clunky Premiere 3.5 and of course lets not forget Lightworks. Further there were also two and three machine editing systems, Super VHS, Beta-SP, Hi8 and vision mixers with funky dissolves.

Today I can do pretty much about anything on my lap top, which back then would have involved a complete studio with millions of euros of equipment and dozens of personnel.

In addition to the lap top there are those little extras which make all the difference. The 23" Cinema display, my beautiful DSR11, the Creek 4330mk2 Special Edition Amplifier, the Spedor Monitor Loudspeakers, the Sony Reference Monitor and of course last but by no means least the hard earned experience.

And my main pony of choice, FCP 5.1.4 recently, said goodbye to it´s 64 codec limit.

A hint of things to come!