The 5pt stroke is to give the large O a look of having a bevelled edge and it is given a glow effect. Had a look at the tut and I think it is over complicated. Using a rectangle with rounded corners and the using a fish eye warp seems over elaborate as well as using a 3D bevel effect with perspective seem unnecessary when you can get the same effect sing ellipses. Will try and do the tut between work and post results. I down loaded the persons file and it still had a clipping masks around the group so that looks wrong according to the tut.