What is the best way to repeatedly load random commercials?

Question

Hi Everyone,
Any help with the above question would be useful.  Here's my end goal: I want to display commercials on a screen at my wife's bakery.  The script should load one commercial, play it, then unload it, randomly load another, and so on.
I am completely new to as3 and have unsuccessfully been following several online tutorials.  My first attempt had code in each commercial file (swf), that randomly called up another commercial, which in turn called up another file, and so on--but this became a memory hog and crashed the program after a few minutes.
Since then I have created one main swf file that loads an xml file, which holds all the information for the commercials.  However, when the swf commercials are loaded according to the xml file, they don't play properly: when the first commercial finishes playing, the next one is already partially done.  Obviously it started playing earlier.  The swfs should unload and load the next according to a timer, with the length of the timer being different for each swf according to the xml data.  Even with this, the first swf didn't always stop when it should.  My code is getting complicated and the display looks sloppy.
I think something like this should be a simple way to display media such as these commercials, but I still haven't found a working solution.  Now I'm wondering if I'm even approaching this wisely.
Would it be better to convert the swf to flv and create an flv player that has 'continuous play' and 'shuffle' features?  Would it be better to convert each swf into movieclips and put them all into one swf?  (I like the manageability of using an external xml file; I will be adding and removing commercials frequently and want to keep this as simple as possible.)
Please let me know what you think is the wisest approach and refer me to any relevant tutorials.
Peace,
Trevor

Answer 1

Thanks again kglad,
I followed your advice, but it is still not working properly.  Here's my problem:
The external swfs continue playing in the background.  Consequently, the event "playcomplete" was dispatched not only at the end of the swf that is being shown, but also at the end of the looping, previously loaded swfs that are not visible; this made the next swf play before the one being shown finished.  That seemed easy enough to fix by adding stop(); to each external swf on the last frame.  I thought everything was fixed -- but those swfs must still be there and are hogging memory before they can be collected for garbage. I've developed a loop that continues to load swfs, taking more and more memory, eventually causing a crash.  So:
After a swf is loaded, how do I completely remove it to free up memory?  I'll attach the code I'm using, but I've made some adjustments to your previous examples (using a string with a random number instead of an array, using different variable names, etc).  Would I still have this memory problem if I used an array?  I have tried to remove eventListeners, to use weak eventListeners, and to remove the loaded Child as best as I know how, but I need some guidance on memory management before I can use this.
Peace,
Trevor
var swfLoader:Loader = new Loader();
var klaesiSwfs:XMLList;
var totalSwfs:Number;
//var swfArray:Array = ["swfs/movie1.swf", "swfs/movie2.swf", "swfs/movie3.swf", "swfs/movie4.swf", "swfs/movie5.swf"];
//loads xml//
var klaesiXmlLoader:URLLoader = new URLLoader ();
klaesiXmlLoader.load(new URLRequest("xml/swf_depot.xml"));
klaesiXmlLoader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, processXML, false, 0, true);
//finds how many swfs are on xml//
function processXML (e:Event):void{
     var klaesiXml:XML = new XML(e.target.data);
     klaesiSwfs=klaesiXml.ID;
     totalSwfs=klaesiSwfs.length();
     //trace ("Total is " + totalSwfs);
     loadRandomSwf();
     klaesiXmlLoader.removeEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, processXML)
     klaesiXmlLoader = null;
//loads swfs//
function loadRandomSwf():void {
     var num:Number = (Math.floor(Math.random() * totalSwfs) + 1);
     var swfName:String = "swfs/movie"+ num +".swf";
     var requestSwf:URLRequest = new URLRequest (swfName);
     swfLoader.load(requestSwf);
     addChild(swfLoader);
     swfLoader.contentLoaderInfo.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, playComplete, false, 0, true);
//listens for the end of each swf//
function playComplete(e:Event){
     MovieClip(swfLoader.content).addEventListener("playNextCommercial", nextSwf, false, 0, true);
     swfLoader.contentLoaderInfo.removeEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, playComplete)
//removes old swf, starts new swf//
function nextSwf(e:Event){
     MovieClip(swfLoader.content).removeEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, nextSwf);
     removeChild(swfLoader);
     loadRandomSwf();