Paying multiple nested timelines from the main timeline newb question

1

I have a flash movie that has 18 movie clips in it that are very complex (animations,audio,videos) and the way i set it up was a pain in the butt so i was wondering if anyone had an easier way.

My Process:

  1. I created the 18 movie clips so they sink with the audio that was recorded for each of them.
  2. Each movie varies in length from 150 frames (smallest) to 780 frames (largest).
  3. I have a frame/border, background also a play and stop button on the main time line on there own layers.
  4. I have 18 other layers for each of the movie clips.
  5. I then had to make a keyframe for each movie clip that strechs along the main time line the total number of frames that are in the movie on that layer.
    for example:
    Scene1 layer contains scene1_mc (scene1_mc is 150 frames long) so in the main timeline i had to make a keyframe at 150frames so that scene1_mc plays its full lenght before getting to the next movieclip scene2_mc on it own layer.

So my main timeline strechs to 3720 frames to accommodate all the movie clips.

Is there a way to put the clips on each of there own layers then each occupy 1 frame on the main timeline and then have each movie play after the first one finishes???

That way i am only using 18 frames on the main timeline instead of 3720.

I have tried multiple actionscripts in version 2.0 and 3.0 but all the movie play at the same time over each other.

I tried this one last and it is not working either

function loadNextMovie(){
if (clip_mc._currentframe == clip_mc._totalframes) {
clip_mc.loadMovie(“second_mc.swf”);
clearInterval(newTimer);
}
}
newTimer = setInterval(loadNextMovie,200);