We're working on a Flash CS4 project where the main .fla file has ballooned in size and 'Publish' is taking forever. I suspect a large amount of the size (and at least some of the compile time) is due to the quantity of audio symbols in the library.

I would love to remove this unnecessary bloat from the .fla file. I've experimented with removing an audio symbol from the library and using the [embed] metadata tag instead, like so:

[Embed(source="audio/music/EndOfLevelDitty.mp3")]
public var EndOfLevelDitty:Class

The resulting published file works perfectly, but there is a problem. Our game uses a preloader on the first frame of the timeline, so all other classes need to be exported in frame 2 (as set in Publish Settings > ActionScript 3.0 Settings). So a size report normally begins like this:

Frame #    Frame Bytes    Total Bytes    Scene
-------    -----------    -----------    ----------------
      1         284515         284515    Scene 1
      2        5485305        5769820     (AS 3.0 Classes Export Frame)

However, if I use an [embed] tag on a small sound, my size report is now:

Frame #    Frame Bytes    Total Bytes    Scene
-------    -----------    -----------    ----------------
      1         363320         363320    Scene 1
      2        5407240        5770560     (AS 3.0 Classes Export Frame)

As you can see, the embedded sound has been exported into frame 1 rather than frame 2. If I were to embed all sounds in this manner, the size of frame 1 would grow to be huge, and users would be looking at a white screen for ages before the preloader frame even loaded.

So my question is this: can I use an [embed] tag but have the embedded asset export in frame 2 instead of frame 1?

Project constraints:

• Our team composition means we can't change to pure Flex at this stage.
• The compiled .swf needs to be 'all in one', so we can't split the preloader into a separate file, and we can't access external resources.

Edit: I'd also settle for having the audio in an embedded library SWC, but there seems to be no way to make that embed in frame 2 either; it always ends up in frame 1.