Masking issues, layering video with animated masks and color range

[sscpac]

So the problem I am experiencing is weird to explain. So i will list the steps that I am taking, because I have zero clue if anything previous makes a difference. I am attempting to work with green screen using color range because my lighting is bad. Chroma, color and ultra key don't work for this. 

So i start with my base video in front of the green screen, I color range the green screen out so I can replace it with an image at a later point. The reflection of green on the surface we are working on makes it also become slightly transparent, so I then create a mask over the table to remove the color range effect from that space. This leaves me with just a table and the rest of the video is gone, so I duplicate the video in the comp and invert the mask on the new video. Afterwards I remove the color range from the first video. Leaving me with a clear table, and a keyed video behind it.

In this video we are drawing a tag at random that decides what we are going to do for that episode, unfortunately we used a green tag, so it also disappears due to color range. So I go about creating and tracking a mask on this object while it is being presented to the camera. I create the mask from the original video that does not have the color range effect. This gives me a clean tag without disturbing the keyed video.

Without fail, every time I am animating the mask on this tag I double click somehow, which causes just the space inside the mask to be visible, and removes the rest of the color ranged video, instead of just the color range effect. I can't figure out what changes, or how to undo it. Ctrl+Z does not fix the mask change. Inverting the mask just makes the space inside the mask disappear entirely and doesn't bring back the video outside of the mask. Deleting the mask does not fix it. Deleting the keyed video and duplicating it again from the original does not fix it. In fact the only thing that seems to actually let me resume editing as I wish to, is deleting the entire comp and starting over.

The obvious solution here is to just not double click... However I would like to understand what is changing so I can undo it instead of starting over every 20 minutes or so. Any help is greatly appreciated, thanks in advance!

[Rick Gerard]

Your workflow seems very awkward. Keylight for parts of the image, track mattes, masks, and maybe some rotobrush or rotoscope all play a part in creating a good key from poorly shot material. Using Color Range is a lousy tool for what you are trying to do.

Cropped screenshots do not help us figure out how to help you. They tell us nothing at all about your workflow. You should select the problem layers, press the U key twice to show us everything you did to the layer, and then maybe we can offer suggestions that might help. 

If you care to post a full-resolution image from the part of the shot that you think will give you the most trouble I'll show you how I would handle it. You might even consider sharing five or ten seconds of the footage. I've worked on a lot of keying projects that took three or more copies of the original layer + Keylight + some track mattes + some rotoscope + some motion tracking just to generate the alpha channel and remove the background. Sometimes it takes three or four more copies of the footage with different techniques to fix the edges and make the shot fit into the new background.

Give us some idea of what the timeline looks like, and embed your screenshots using the toolbar and somebody will give you some good suggestions. 

*The "Drag & Drop here..." area is buggy and should not be used to share images. Please use the toolbar or just drag your images to the reply field.

[sscpac]

Duly noted. I wasn't sure what all I could slap into this forum as its only my second time attempting to use it. When I am working again I can quickly record the process, post it to my personal youtube channel and link it here if that would be more helpful. It is quite late for me at present so it will be tomorrow most likely. I'm sure I'm just overlooking something silly, but I don't know what it is. I find my greatest joy in learning things, so constructive criticism is of course welcome.

[sscpac]

Although to be fair, several attempts later i was able to finish what I was doing. However I have several more episodes to edit so I will attempt to recreate the issue.

[Mylenium]

Your failures to retrieve the footage after double-clicking can easily be mundane cache issues or relate to you potentially missing some finer points of Keylight, no offense. Agree with Rick, though. Without seeing your settings and the full source footage as well as having some basic info about your footage, comp settings, cache and so on it's nearly impossible to advise on what would be the best workflow here. From the images you provided the key looks terrible and messing things further up with premature masking may make things even worse. On that not you should at least educate yourself on what Keylight's inside/ outside masks (garbage mattes) do if you realyl want to employ masking procedures so early in the game. not knowing about this stuff may be part of your problem.

Mylenium