If I understand correctly, the way I’ve done this in the past is to put all the objects I want the camera to go around in a null. I keep the camera still and rotate the null. This offers you the ability to then zoom or move the camera in at the end or whenever you need it…
As far as the video as a texture, there is a problem with the latest update for Quicktime. If you upgraded recently, you’ll need to downgrade to get it to work. We just ran into this problem a couple of weeks ago at the school I teach at. We had to downgrade several hundred machines to get it to work.
It’s an option in all Illustrator versions to save as previous versions. First you select save, make sure you have Illustrator .ai selected (as opposed to .pdf) when you hit save you will be presented with options…see attached image.
Could you put your sphere and plane in a Null? If you move the Null, both will move together, but you can animate the sphere’s rotation without changing the rotation of the sphere?