No problem, I’m happy to (try to) help. 🙂
I have no idea what they were doing in that Cineversity tut, but that’s not normal behavior. Maybe they were using shortcut keys or a script or something? That would certainly be bad practice for a tutorial….
The quickest way to do it:
*make editable (C shortcut);
*enable poly mode and select all (ctrl + a);
*Functions>Disconnect (uncheck “preserve groups”);
*and Functions>Explode Segments.
Regarding the Phong issue, AFAIK the same problem was there in R9. The workaround is to use “Break Phong Shading” after you do the bevel. The command is available in the right-click context menu and the Functions menu.