Movieclip > to bitmap

programming flash
1

I’m confused. See, I had this project for a client: a square webpage, made out of little squares that rotate when going from when page to another.

So what I did was:

  1. Load page 2
  2. Hide page 1
  3. create as many squares as necessary to fill the space
  4. duplicate page 1 in each of the little squares, moving it so there’s no difference whatsoever for the user.
  5. create the same amount of squares, duplicate page 2 in all of them, with the same method described in 4, but keep them hidden.
  6. Rotate the squares created in 4, and when they are midway (aka showing only a slim line), swap them with those created in 5 (unloading the squares created in 4 while I’m at it)
  7. When all the squares have finished rotating, unload them and show page 2.

It works well, as expected and all; but i have one major issue: some pages are quite heavy (containing large pictures, animation, etc), so the rotation is sometimes choppy, specially on old pcs, since I have the page duplicated as many times as there is squares.
Apparently, masking the non-apparent parts doesn’t help.
It was my first professional site; you can have a look at http://www.orient499.com
No critics please, I know what’s wrong, I’m working on the new version, and I will ask for critics, but later.

So I thought I would re-do it all is AS3, since it’s more robust, and I thought about using the bitmapdata to speed up stuff.

My question is:
How can I take the contents of a movieclip, break it into a grid of little bitmapdatas, and send each of those bitmapdatas to a different movieclip?

I hope I was clear enough. I know my english isn’t that good.
If you could have an example, even in AS2, some source file, or just put me on the right track…Thanks in advance.

edit: And i read the article about copying bitmapdata on livedocs, but that doesn’t help me much. Okay, there’s copyPixels() that can take coordinates, but copies only from a bitmap, and I have draw() that copies from a movieclip, but doesn’t take coordinates.
Should I use draw to get a big bitmapdata of my movieclip before parsing it into smaller ones?
Please help, I have no idea where to begin. I was okay with AS2, but AS3 is killing me.[URL=“http://livedocs.adobe.com/flash/9.0/main/wwhelp/wwhimpl/common/html/wwhelp.htm?context=LiveDocs_Parts&file=00000247.html”]