Thanks for writing back Dave and Rick,

I think there is something in what Dave said about opening a new layer window, but it still isn't working right.  Please see the screenshot of two full project windows below.

One thing that could be giving me problems is my layer content... it is a numbers layer attached to a solid layer, as you can see.

In the comp window at the top of each screenshot below, you can see the bezier points from my original mask that I created by clicking on 'Shape' next to 'Mask' on the left in the timeline window after selecting 'Layer>Mask>New Mask'... but I can see that this isn't the right way to do it because (1) it isn't masking, it only shows bezier points. (2) When I try to adjust those bezier points in the comp window it only stretches the numbers. And (3) when I'm in the comp window, I don't have access to the layer shape square and oval tools... they are grayed-out.

So in the layer window after double-clicking on my numbers layer, in screen #2 below, you can see that it isn't showing anything... just black, but you can see the bezier points from my original masking attempt that also show up in the comp window.  But in that layer window I do have the square and oval tools available to me and you can see that I tried creating a new experiment with a triangle mask, but that only shows bezier points and no masking effect.  When I close that window, as Dave said, after making the new triangle mask, it only broadens out my original mask besizer points in the comp window to encompass both masks now, but does not reflect either masks actual shape, nor is it actually masking anything.

Let me know what you think.

Thanks again,

digi

Okay, I get it.

So I can't do a plain mask on a numbers or letters layer... but I can...

1) Do a track matte with a white mask layer on top set to Chroma, and a second layer with the numbers set to track matte so only the area of the white top layer shows through... I've done that kind of thing in Premiere successfully to get picture in picture and stencil mask text on an animated background.

2) Render the numbers layer to an AVI and then import it in to a new project and mask it there.

3) Just put black layer squares over what I don't want, which masks to black, render that and then layer the rendered files on top of each other using black screening to bring them all together.

Okay, thanks for clearing this problem up... I couldn't find info on this limitation anyplace else.

Thanks,

digi

Thanks Dave,

I've used track matte techniques previously in Premiere, as I mentioned in (1) in my last post.

Here is a sample of the use of track matting to create the base animated text with Premiere in this short video I created late last month...

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=f-sUWa9FGdQ&feature=youtu.be&vq=h d720

digi