Über. Thanks for sharing. Great ideas.

you can you TweenLite FramePlugin to tween the frame of a movie clip directly instead of tweening a property and updating the frame on onUpdate. You can actually tween the timeline to a frame label using FrameLabelPlugin. it’s that easy:

TweenPlugin.activate([FramePlugin, FrameLabelPlugin]);
TweenLite.to(mc1, .5, {frame:20});
TweenLite.to(mc2, .5, {frameLabel:’rollOver’});

there is also a workaround for the drawback you mentioned and it’s quite easy to apply. all you need to adjust is the duration of the tween to get your animations to be smooth.
it’s not a problem of the scripted animation. when you rollover your button and the quickly rollout the playhead travels the distance from frame 5 to 1 in 0.5 sec. if your framerate is 30fps then this scripted transition is 6 times slower, and that’s why it looks jerky to you. you need to determine the time and this utility method comes in help :

public static function approxTimeTo(frame:*, mc:MovieClip):Number {
var frameNum:int;
var fr :int;

if (frame is String) frameNum = labelToFrameNumber(frame, mc);
else if (frame is int) frameNum = frame;
else throw new Error(‘approxTimeTo requires String or int as 1st argument’);

if(!mc.stage) throw new Error(‘approxTimeTo cannot calculate time to frame! supplied movieclip is not on stage. cannot determine framerate.’)
fr = mc.stage.frameRate;

return (frameNum – mc.currentFrame) / fr;
}

you just need to pass the frame number or framelabel of the frame you need to go to as first argument and the movieclip you want to tween.
the method just returns the approximate duration (in seconds) of the animation from the current frame to the desired frame number or label.
hope that helps