Photo cutouts on Apple TV

Question

I noticed I have this one image that scrolls up on my Apple TV when it's in Screensaver mode (Photos mode, not Slideshow) that is CUT OUT. It's of one of my parrots flying, and a long time ago I traced him and saved the channel, and Apple TV recognizes that. It looks very cool because he floats up among the other photos but is cut out to just around him flying with no background.
I have studied the Photoshop file (tif, RGB, 8 bit, flat with just that one extra channel, about 470k) and I have tried to recreate this effect with other photos, but they won't work. They always come up with white backgrounds, even if I give them a black background and flatten them. I can't figure out how to make the background transparent. Anyone figure this out?

Answer 1

I know there's a "preserve transparency" option when saving gifs, which I tried (didn't work), but I don't see that option when saving a tiff or anywhere else with the file open. And this image that does work in AppleTV with transparency IS a tiff. The one difference I do notice when I have both files open is at the top of the file that works there's a pound sign (RGB/8#) and the other file that isn't working has (RGB/8*). I just played around and that seems to relate to the embedded color profile, so I removed it. Still not working.
The file that IS working also is flat and has the original background, so that's not causing the problem. This isn't a critical thing for work or anything but I'm just curious to figure it out now, and figure a few others might want to play around with this and having cutouts float by in the screen saver. I've been playing with Photoshop since version 2.0 and can't figure out what's different between these two files. There's no paths in the file that works, either.