transparency and quicktime

[bagww]

Here's the nuts and bolts, folks:

I have a still photo of a figure. The figure has been removed from the background. I need to import it into AE and apply a motion effect (perhaps ripple). No problem so far.. however, what comes next is giving me fits.

I need to export this rippling figure to a quicktime movie. The movie needs to maintain a transparency so that I can import it back into AE and add any background I wish while the figure remains visible.

I've experimented with alpha channels and matting, however it seems that once exported to qiucktime, these are lost.

Any ideas?

 

[ellipsis]

If you're only importing your figure back into AE, it doesn't need to be a QT movie - a PICT or Photoshop sequence will work just fine, but you don't even need to do that. After you've added your fx, pre-compose the relevant layers and work with that as a layer inside the main comp.