Trouble with Layers

I finished my main scene with the table the chairs and the atmospheric affect.  But i ran into a problem where when i rendered out the layers in the batch render editor all the layers came out black.  I used an ambient occlusion on the objects in each layer (1 object per layer). And i also set the color of each object to pure white.  Im not sure what the problem is, im sure its very simple i just must of forgot a step and i cant think of it for some reason and i feel really dumb.  

Although i am happy with the way the scene came out.  i created the room all by myself.  I used planes to create the walls and i used a combination of cylinders and planes to create my window in the room.  Which you will actually never see in the video.  The walls in the room i believe look like they have depth to them, i used a useful image on them to texture it and i think it did the trick.  I also added motion blur in this scene to the ball.  I havent put the frames together yet to see it all rendered and played out, partly because i cant render out the scenes in layers but i am excited to see how it comes out.  

I did render the master layer out as a jpg and for a quick mental ray render i am very proud of the result.  Im gonna try and tackle Adobe After Affects tomorrow to see if i can use that program to play my scenes together.  I sort of want to write a code myself that will open up the images and play them at 24fps.  I cant see how that can be that difficult and im sure it will be a fun task. The great part was if i would be able to code something like that, and actually export it as a quick time file lets say.  Idk just thoughts, that may be harder than i have time for or maybe not, i will take a look into it.