Masking Problem

[angels.of.promise]

hi guys im trying to set up a simple mask. But when i change the color of the mask the swf does not reflect the change. Indeed the stage does not reflect the stage half the time. It was easy to set up masking in Flash8 but it seems i'm getting errors? anyone else have this problem.

Ps. It seems to only happen with the mask is the same size or larger then the image beaing masked.

[panel]

Masking is working as always does in FLash.
mask is a shape, so collor dosen't metter and you can't create gradient mask (if that what you need) without using actionscript.