Exporting library assets to frame 1 causes delay

Question

I'm fairly new to Actionscript 3, just trying to puzzle something out.
I have several small movie clips saved in the library of myCS4 Flash.fla file, I want to make them available to dynamically add to the display list as children, based on the button clicks of the viewer. I can get it all to work fine via Symbol Properties > Linkage > Export for Actionscript.
BUT - When the movie clips are set to "export for actionscript" from the  Library, playback seems to hang on frame 1 until all of these  exported assets have downloaded. The big problem is that I have an ultra-simple but totally custom preloader/progress animation coded in a loop in the second and third frames, which kicks out to frame 4 and continues playback as soon as the download is complete.
Because of this, the preloader has essentially become useless - because all that can be seen is several seconds of empty stage, until the vast majority of the bulky assets have downloaded. Then the preloader flashes onstage for just an instant, and disappears because the content is already up.
So, my questions are:
A)  Is there a SIMPLE alternate method to load these library assets in such a way that it doesn't cause this major lag on frame 1?
B)  Failing that, I suspect I may have to retool my preloader to run as an ENTER_FRAME event in frame 1.  Is this worth the effort (can this potentially resolve the lag issue and allow for a meaningful preload progress animation, despite the lag from the asset export?)
Any advice, thoughts, ideas (sample code?) would be greatly appreciated!!
Thanks in advance,
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**Edit follows**
OK, so after a little more research, I have basically answered this question for myself. I'm updating the post for the benefit of others who may find themselves in my shoes somewhere down the road.
The solution (as far as I can see) is to pretty much just avoid using the "Export for Actionscript" option for exporting assets to the timeline, as much as possible. Maybe it's fine for a few small assets, but not the best choice for large stuff, which in my case was the lions' share of the content!!
Or at least don't use the default setting of exporting to frame one!!  This will likely foul up ANY preloader, because essentially Flash player will not display any of the content on frame one until ALL of the content on that frame has fully downloaded - You'll be stuck staring at an empty stage for ages, then when the preloader finally does show up on the stage and run, it will zip by in an instant while (probably) doing its job properly, but it's really only updating on the load progress of the balance of the SWF file.
The info I found suggested one easy method of making the assets available to Actionscript -- simply just place all of the required library assets into some unseen frame in the timeline, shortly AFTER your preloader runs.  Then Flash Player will load them after the preloader has done its thing, and they will be available to be accessed by Actionscript later in the timeline when you really need them.
Also FYI -- I also tried changing the export settings to have Flash export the assets in question in frame four instead of frame one, with the unfortunate and unexpected result that my published SWF began skipping playback directly to frame four, which also effectively killed my preloader (which was running in frames two and three.) This glitch remained, even after reverting the export setting back to export the assets in frame one!!  It seems like my .FLA file was irreversibly altered (contaminated??) by changing the export frame setting?!?  Yikes!!
Luckily I had an earlier version saved under a different file name, it was relatively easy to go back to that version and bring it up to date.
Anyway - that's all for now. Hope this info can help someone else....
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Answer 1

See edit at bottom of original post....