large swf problem

[martintheis]

My problem is this:
I am making a series of language lessons in flash for my school to use. Because the lessons are around 25 minutes and contain sound and some animation, the resulting swf file is quite big- about 15mb. So when a class of 30 all access the file on the internet at the same time it takes ages to load. It does need to be on the net because I want to make it available to other schools. I suppose I could chop it up, but I don't have the knowledge to make them play in a sequence.
Can anyone suggest a solution? I'd be very grateful and I'll send you the finished result if you're interested in learning Spanish.
Martin.

[wattsup]

Well load all your sounds,pics and so on externally. If you chop it up. then in the last key frame user loadMovie("nextSwf.swf");

[martintheis]

Thanks, loading the large sound file externally sounds like a great solution. Apologies for my ignorance, but how do I load them externally? I'm using MX 2004.
Thanks again for the help.

[wattsup]

use something like

mySound = new Sound();
mySound.loadSound("test.mp3", true);
mySound.start();

[martintheis]

Thanks, that's great. I'll give it a go.

[martintheis]

I have fiddled around and used your suggestions and I was now wondering if there is a way to have next part of a lesson sequence loading up before the one being watched has finished. Because even if I break the lesson into smaller swfs they will still have twiddle their thumbs while the next part is loading. Is there anyway of having the next swf in a figurative way loading up behind the scenes so that it appears loaded when the the current swf finishes?
Thanks

[Mack]

Wellerm, You could split it up into bite-sized chunks which are loaded into levels by an action script somehting like loadMovieNum("part2.swf",_level2) just after the start of each chunk. Each chunk will also be set to stop(); at the start on a blank frame, which of course will be transparent while it loads. When the pupils reach the end of chunk you could then tellTarget(_level2) or whatever to play() from it's stopped state with loadMovieNum(part3.swf, _level3) on frame 2. I guess you'll need to think carefully about how long each chunk will take to complete -vs- download times, those pesky kids get bored easy.

This is my take on things with a Flash 5 level of thinking, there's probably a far more sexy MXy way of doing it. However, I've found some of these sexy MXy components (e.g. progress bars, load checking components) can add 40 or 50k to your .swf which is rather counter productive.

[martintheis]

Thanks for those ideas. I feel like I'm starting to get somewhere.