Graphics

I pull player headshots from a URL that is an RSS feed. Within a material I have it setup to pull the headshot in one layer and a mask in another to fade it into the lower third. Will a datalinq key work inside of a material? I haven't seem to have luck yet.

No, datalinq keys don't work in materials because materials are used globally but a datalinq key is scene specific.
Instead of datalinq'ing the material you should datalinq the quad/object. Object > Object Inspector > Datalinq >Material Source > Datalinq
You can use Datalinq keys here. This creates what is called a volatile texture. When you datalinq an image/video to an object this new volatile texture will take on the properties of the material that is is replacing.
#XPression

@garner I use volatile texture in a few other scenes through scripting. I was worried I wouldn't get masking done right, but it seems to work now. I will try this if I run into masking issues further down the line.
#XPression