Masking Issues

I am having trouble masking my tripod in Panoweaver 8.6 (Trial Version). I am trying to stitch a spherical tour and have created masks for 5 of my 6 images. The first issue that I am experiencing is that the masks are not saved in the project: when I reload, there are no masks present. I have exported the masks I created and have tried reloading them and then stitching, however the masks do not seem to have had any effect - the tripod is still visible in the final image.

I have also noticed that some of my control points were not saved in the project: on some of the image pairs only 2 of 6 control points remained when I reloaded the project.

Has anyone else experienced this? I would like use Panoweaver for the distortion-free stiching, but I can't see buying the software if I can't mask the tripod.

In panoweaver, you can remove the tripod directly.

After all the settings, it is suggested that you can save stitching parameters in panorama menu and stitch with the parameters next time.