Smooth Animation Leadin Timing

When loading an animation into SL, we are given the option for a lead in time for the animation to transition from whatever else is playing to the new animation. I have found that this works well, the first time the animation is played, but if you have a multi-animation prim where I can reselect the first animation, it seems to skip the leadin to the animation the second time around.

Is there any way to force SL to play this leadin? its almost as if once the animation is loaded in memory from the first play, SL feels its ok to skip this leadin. But I WANT the leadins -they are important to smooth transitions. Any clues?

SL shouldn't be playing animations any differently the first time or the umpteenth time. I think what you're probably seeing is this: the first time you play an animation in a session, it needs to be downloaded from the asset server, incurring a slight delay which probably has the visual effect of lengthening the transition. After that it's cached locally, so it loads more quickly - until you log out, or go do other things for a while.

So I suspect if you want a nice long transition, you'll just have to add more time to the lead-ins and lead-outs, and be prepared for it to look a bit extra-long that first time.

well, I have the lead in time set to 0.7 seconds on all my animations - and the first time it is about that. Afterwards, it is instantaneous - no transition at all - it just flicks there with no swoop at all. It is really rather weird -

know of any way to clear out the buffer of an old animation?