Pushing Loader.content into DisplayObject Freezes Animation

Question

I am working on a slideshow app which involves a bunch of images with mask effects cycling one after the other. I created a buffer to preload images in the background while the animation plays. I am using Tweener for all my tweens, and this has nothing to do with garbage collection or declaring vars inside function scope. The problem is the following lines of code in my complete handler of the flash.display.Loader class cause the animation to freese for a split second:
_preloadingSlide.source = _preLoader.content;
_preloadingSlide.loading = false;
_preloadingSlide.loaded = true;
_preloadingSlide is an insctance of a custom class that extends Sprite. The source attribute is a setter/getter whos code is as follows:
public function set source( value:DisplayObject ):void{
            _source = value; //_source is of type DisplayObject
            if( _source!= null ){
                addChild( _source );
I have isolated the error to these lines of code. When I halt execution while buffering and wait until all images are loaded there is no issue. Whenever these line execute it freezes the animation for a half second or so. I thought maybe it had to do with the internal copying the bytearray that FLASH is doing. Anyone have any ideas?

Answer 1

Is the profiler available as a set of AS classes? I use the SDK and I thought it was only for FLEX Builder. I use the underlying classes in flash.sampler to monitor memory consumption, etc as well. I am working on some tests using getTimer to see exactly how long it is takes for the Loader class to assign its content to my class, and as an alternative, exactly how long it takes to convert the bytearray of the bitmap data loaded with URLStream using Loader.loadBytes. I am sure the problem is that these bytearrays are very large due to the image size (900x800 avrg), and whatever internal code goes on in the loader class to convert them to a DisplayObject hangs up the player. Just out of curiosity is the source code of the Loader class available? Once again thanks for the help.