Animations on iOS

[Ben Rubinstein]

What are my options for displaying an animation in a portion of the 
card/screen on iOS?

Currently I've tried:

1) making it into a video, in a very limited range of formats, and playing it 
from an external file using a native control

Pros: works, choice of controller etc, plays from a separate file and starts 
up fairly quickly

Cons: video formats not super-efficient for animation, and at least as I've 
managed so far, limited to certain resolutions - I'm forced to crop or squash 
my original animation.

2) making it into a GIF on the card, which works quite nicely except that 
there's an enormous delay going to the card, presumably as the animation is 
buffered.

Pros: can be exactly the size I want; plays quite smoothly

Cons: I've not managed to play this from an external file, and if it's 
embedded on the card there's an unacceptable delay.


Is there a third way?  Should I be able to set the filename of an image object 
to an external gif file?  Are there some video formats accepted on iOS which 
are good for animation and which will allow arbitrary dimensions?

TIA,

Ben