How do I load multiple large images and video in Actionscript 3.0?

I am creating a Flash site for a client who wants to display many (about 15) fairly hi-res photos as well as a video. I am using the Video class to display and control the video, and the Loader class to load the photos. I preload them from an XML file up front, while "loading..." is displayed.

The video plays immediately after the loader finishes, and the user can also choose to view the slideshow, which has left/right arrows which show each photo with a simple fade tween between each one.

The problem I am having seems to be that when all these assets are loaded, the video and the "fade" effects are very choppy. If I cut down on the number of photos, everything works fine; but I have to include all of them, plus the video.

I am storing all the Loader instance开发者_StackOverflows in an array, and when they are requested, I add them to the stage and fade them in. When it finishes fading in I remove the previous one from the stage. So they are all stored in Flash's "memory", but there is only one Loader or Video instance on the stage at any given time. Is there a better way to handle this? Perhaps some way to cache the images but not bog down Flash's memory? I would prefer to have everything loaded up front in order to avoid needing a "loading..." for every slide.

This article by Grant Skinner should help you solve this issue. Even if you remove the photos from the stage, the Bitmaps are still eating up processor power:

http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2008/04/failure_to_unlo.html