Linked Texture Animations

OK, bear with me while I try and explain this.

I need to have a continuous animation across multiple prims. It seems like if the prims are all the same size and the animation start at exactly the same time, the animation would flow seamlessly from one prim to the next with no visible break.

Through experimentation with a simple smooth animation script I was able to get this to work (mostly by dumb luck I think). But once the group of prims is rerezzed everything is out of whack.

I am wondering if there is some why to synchronize all the animations using a single script in the root prim and telling the child prims to start their animations at the right moment or something.

Arent' texture animations actually done on the client side?
And wouldn't that make their start time unscriptable?

yes and yes. Texture scaling is also done client side, as is evident with some textures appearing to rescale when the prim is selected in edit mode, and then snap back when unselected.