I'm curious as to why there are so many more steps for you than with garbage mattes  ... would love an explanation. Maybe there's more help could be given.

Neil

>Need a download for Adobe Premiere CC 2014

Gone... Adobe now only provides the most recent two versions

Here's a very short video from some time back showing how quickly one can do what the garbage mattes did ... quicker in many respects ... just by using the pen tool opacity masking. No hunting up the effect, drag/drop ... just hit the Pen tool on opacity mask in the ECP, start clicking.

Neil

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6kUdNTlo6Y

Opacity masks do the same thing and are easy to use:

https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/using/masking-tracking.html