Software: Sony Vegas 10 Pro, After Effects CS 5.5, Adobe Photoshop CS 6.
File format: Whatever came out of my Canon 60D.
Import: Zero. It loads immediately.
Final render: About 2 minutes.
PC: Windows 7, Intel Core i7 2600k, 16GB RAM.
Problems: None that weren't self inflicted. I bit off more than I could chew by shooting 46 separate green screen shots. Keying, compositing, and editing this solo was simply too much, completely broke me. Ended up cutting out the middle of my story and got in with 2 minutes to spare after the fastest drive into town I've ever had.
Highlight: PluralEyes for Sony Vegas. It's just amazing. I recorded my audio in a Zoom H4n and this worked so beautifully well to sync everything up for me.

Software: Premiere Pro CS5.5, After Effects CS 5.5, Pro Tools 9, Logic Pro 9
File format: Whatever came out of my Canon 550D (I think its h264).
Import: Loaded Immediately
Final render: 12 minutes from Premiere to correct file format
PC: Mac OSX 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard), Intel i5, 4GB DDR3 RAM.
Summation: Everything on the visual side ran very smoothly and we even had time to go back and fix some of the problems from our first batch of color correction (something we definitely didn't think we would have time for). On the audio side Pro Tools refused to bounce the audio from around 5:30 - 6:00 pm on Sunday but eventually it bounced out the audio and we got the film in with 15 minutes left.

Software: Avid Symphony 6.0.1
File format: XDcam EX
Import: Zero. AMA'ed it.
Output from editing software: 6'30" (realtime to tape)
Final render: (realtime digitize into a different computer) then ~10 min encode
Edit PC: Win 7 with 2x Xeons and 12 GB RAM
Encode: Macbook pro with i7, 16 GB RAM
Problems: none.

Software: Adobe Premiere Pro CS6
File Format: 5K R3D from RED Epic at 7:1 REDCODE, 16-bit WAVs from Sound Devices 788T
Import: Download times for a 256GB REDMAG onto the scratch drive varied depending on how full it was (15-60 minutes) but zero import times into PP CS6 itself (cutting natively).
Output from editing software: Approx 7 minutes
PC: Windows 7, Intel Core i7 2600k, 20GB RAM
Problems: There were some issues leading up to the weekend/Saturday morning (I stayed well away from it and let Johno handle it). Turned out there was a faulty RAM slot, as well as the Blackmagic SDI card and REDRocket card not wanting to play nice together. After that, smooth sailing (as far as the hardware/software side of things was concerned. The edit team itself was a different story, no time for grade/decent sound mix, etc).
Highlights: Audio/video sync being virtually instantaneous by means of a lockit box on the camera and the 788T having a super-accurate internal clock. Only jammed timecode twice over a 29 hour shooting period. Also, cutting multiple streams of native 5K footage without the PC breaking a sweat boggles the mind to see.

Software: Final Cut Pro X
File format: XDCAM EX
Import: I can't remember but It may have taken around 20 minutes using the XDCAM import software then importing it into Final Cut as MOV files
Final render: Sent using compressor settings, took about 20 minutes
PC: Macbook pro early 2009 2.66ghz Core2Duo 8 GB ram OS 10.7.4
Problems: I think I may have spent a good 40 minutes waiting for all the color grading to render but I was waiting for the score to be written picture was locked and there was only the matter of trying to fine tune sound fx but I wasn't in the right mindset to come up with creative ideas for that and I wish I was.
apart from that there was a moment were Final Cut became sluggish so I did a reboot and it was fine after that.

Software: Final Cut Pro X
File format: H.264 MOV out of a 550D
Import: Practically instant thanks to proxy files and background importing
Output from editing software: ~6 minutes for a 5:30 long sequence
Final render: ~8 minutes using Adobe Media Encoder
PC: 15" Macbook Pro, 2.4 GHz i7, 8 GB of RAM

Problems: Things ran smoothly at first, but as I bounced between After Effects and FCPX they got progressively worse, to the point where it would take minutes to do anything in FCPX. Upon rendering, saving and rebooting, I found USB bus errors so I unplugged my external USB keyboard and continued plugging away. By that point, I was done with After Effects, but it ran well after that.

Otherwise my biggest frustrations were not knowing how to do things in FCPX that I could do quite easily in FCP6. However, they thankfully weren't show-stoppers and the overall niceness of FCPX made up for it.

Software: Premiere Pro CS5, After Effects CS5, Adobe Photoshop CS5.
File format: MOV's from a 60D.
Import: My card reader was quite slow, around 5 or 6 minutes to empty the card onto the SSD
Final render: About 4 minutes.
PC: Windows 7, Intel Core i7 2700k, 16GB RAM.
Problems: Had a strange Premiere issue where it would throw up an error window and crash if you click continue, but if you ignored it and left it in the b/g it worked fine anyway. Turned out the panel that shows the waveform had taken offence to me moving the file that was displayed on it, so even reloading wouldn't help. I simply shut that panel, and reopened it and it was fine.
Highlight: I finally learned a few hotkeys

Software: Final Cut Pro Studio
File format: .MOD
Import: 1hour and 6mins (of footage) @ real time
Output from editing software: About 6 mins for 6mins
Final render: 15min through H264 .mov Compressor
PC: iMac i5 4G
Problems: None

Software: Sony Vegas 10.0
File format: .mts, AVCHD, 1080p
Import: 4 minutes approx
Final Render: 45 minutes for 7 minute film (Moderate number of effects, tracks etc)
PC: T3500 series. Windows 7 64 bit, 8 3ghz cores, 24 gb ram, 1gb Nvidia Quadro Video Card
Problems: Worked very fast while editing, but was ridiculously slow on the render.
MAJOR GLITCH with audio, music track had a very high bitrate, and Vegas caused the whole track to stutter when we rendered it.
Vegas also periodically crashed.
Overall a very disappointing performance considering the computer's power.

in reply to Matthew J Scadden:

What an odd result. Something misconfigured? Have you tested to see if it was a specific effect?

Software: Adobe Premiere Pro CS5, Audition CS6, After Effects CS6
File format: H.264 .MOV
Import: Copying from SD card to computer varied from a few seconds to a couple of minutes.
Final Render: 45 mins
PC: MACBOOK PRO 2.53 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 8 gb RAM (Compile and edit computer)
Problems: First year we done it. 3 computers doing separate jobs (All MBP's). We had transfer delays using the drop box set up (probably because of the slow-as-country internet network). Having to render to view the film.

But no crashes, and no issues relating to using CS5. I would recommend at least CS5. Being able to use a 64 bit system really makes great use of the extra RAM.

Software: Avid Media Composer 5, Avid Symphony 6, EditShare network
File format: 24mbit AVCHD
Import: Unsure - was done on another EditShare connected edit suite in the background. Close to realtime.
Output from editing software: A little faster than realtime
Final render: About 4-5 minutes in Adobe Media Encoder
PC: HP Z800 and Z400 workstations.
Problems: Minor bin locking and sequence version error between the suites as EditShare client needs upgrading for Symphony 6.

in reply to themorgan:

Even the first of my renders which only had the files and sound in it took a very long time - it doesn't seem to be down to the effects...I've been really struggling in general to get good render times out of vegas. I keep on thinking that there must be some setting somewhere which is screwing it around, but I can't for the life of me find anything that doesn't seem standard.

in reply to Matthew J Scadden:

I do suspect there are Vegas settings which, if set inappropriately for your particular computer or input file type, will cause renders to slow down. Trying to work out what those settings might be is the hard part.

I know from previous experience that Vegas can be a dog if rendering on an underpowered computer - three years ago it took over two hours to render my 48 Hrs film (sob sob) - but the same can be said for most NLEs, and some users are having similar problems with computers which definitely don't seem underpowered.

Certainly I've had no recent problems with Vegas since getting a gruntier computer (although even the new one's not ultra-powerful, and is now 2.5 years old) - this year's project had half a dozen video tracks (most with compositing and/or other effects) and half a dozen audio tracks, and it rendered at around 50% realtime. Good enough for me...

Software: Sony Vegas 11
File format: Can't remember - it's a modified GH1, but I modified it ages ago, something like 30-40mbit
Import: Instant
Output from editing software: About ten minutes
Final render: 7ish hours to get ready to the point where we could render, otherwise about 30 minutes.
PC: Win7, core i7 and then core 2 quad
Problems: First computer performed fine but had a possible hard drive failure, second computer froze and crashed, consistantly.

Apparently it's an issue with .net

in reply to Matthew J Scadden:

Vegas 10 on my old computer when set to CPU rendering was twice as fast as GPU - Quadro cards are expensive, underpowered, and often have very few CUDA cores for the price - your CPU is probably faster.

Software: CS5.5, Pluraleyes demo
File format: 550D/60D/5dmkiii standard
Import: More or less immediate, it goes through a "conforming" step fairly quickly in the background.
Final render: About 10-15 mins (est. - I only did 2 scenes on this machine)
PC: Lenovo laptop, i5 Sandy Bridge (forget the number), 8gb
Problems: Software & performance in general ran well, main problem is that this was one of 2 editing computers and we didn't have the workflow sorted, esp with the other one being a Macbook. There were a couple of issues on my PC, firstly that the mkiii codec slowed it right down until we read up on that issue and renamed the files from ".mov" to ".mpg", after which it was fine. Second, I had given Pluraleyes a quick dry run prior and it worked well but on the day, particularly with the mkiii files, it kept starting AME, presumably the unpack the codec, and then AME sat there and didn't do anything. So back to manual sync, or camera sound.
Oh yeah and Warp Stabilise didn't work well on an out of focus shot in AE.
Moral of the story - if you recruit a new editor on the Wednesday, replan your workflow, and don't fly new equipment into the country 2 hours into the comp.

in reply to Craig:

don't fly new equipment into the country 2 hours into the comp.

Word.