Operaguy: here you go:-

http://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/Main_Intro.php

Does the job and it's free!

As for Vegas, it's basically a standard NLE, so it would be like Premiere. On the other hand, it has some fairly decent compositing functions (masking and the rest of it) so I also use it where others would use AfterEffects.

That being said, I've also considered getting into a dedicated compositor, still trying to make up my mind between AfterEffects or going completely mental and taking the plunge with Nuke.

I recently blew up a helicopter (haha I've always wanted to do that!), so I'm compositing direct light, IDL, DOF, two explosions, fires, smoke, and mixing in some motion blur - all for one six second scene. So I did that in a new Vegas project, otherwise the main project would have become too confusing for my curry and beer infested mind. (I render to uncompressed avi and import this into the main project.)

Since I am adding a separate compositing step into my workflow anyway, I have therefore wondered if using a real compositor might give me an edge...