PreLoader for V2 Components

Question

I am using a large number of V2 components in an application.
I have created MovieClips that contain the V2 components and
written classes that I attach to these MovieClips. The classes
contain a fair amount of code to retrieve data from the web,
perform calculations on it, format it, and then place it in the V2
components for presentation.
When I test the application on my machine (i.e. no
downloading required over the internet) nothing appears until all
of the calculations in the classes are done, which takes about 15
to 20 seconds.
My question: Is there a way to have the calculations run in
the "background" while I provide an animation to amuse the visitor
until all of the calculations are done. Then I would present V2
rich MovieClips populated with all of the data.
I tried loading all of the V2 Rich MovieClips with _visible
set to false. Then, once all calculations were done I made the
clips visible. Although this works, as far as displaying the
Movieclips quickly with all of the calculated data, I still can't
provide a simple animation while the calculations are going on. The
animation stops while the calculations and formatting in the
attached MovieClip classes are being performed.
Can anyone point me to a tutorial that might address my
problem. Or am I just up against the wall on this one? It seems
every time I try to use V2 components I run into this problem even
without the linked classes. I've tried loading the class files in
frames other than the first frame, but it doesn't seem to make a
difference.

Answer 1

I don't think you can put a pre-loader on streaming video.
Although I'm not an expert. I would suggest a couple things though.
1. That quicktime is way to large. If you expect anyone to
wait for it, you're probably expecting too much. I've been waiting
for 5min now and nothing.
Solution: Have a smaller version of the file, and a link to
the high rez. That way, they get something, and can "download" the
high rez if desired.
2. You said you wanted to keep the QT higher resolution.
Well, Flash was built for internet bandwidth. You could convert to
FLV while maintaining high resolution. Do some testing and go with
what looks the best.
You could also mess with the frame rate. Cut the frames in
half, while maintaining resolution, and change audio to mono. That
should cut your file size down quite a bit.
3. If the above solutions don't work for you, try a having it
load in the background. You could have the site load first, and set
the parameters of the FLV playback to "Autoplay = False"