It is on my list of things to do to add a preload option which would reduce this delay. When do you need it for?

The way I knwo other users have coped with this delay is to run the clip with the layer opacity at zero and then fade in the layer. You could easily snap in the layer but not sure how this would work for your situation.

The delay is caused by the PC loading the image from file to memory. Preloading would be the only option but it would only be possible to preload a single clip at a time.

Another way would be to use a custom interaction plugin. You can get an event when the clip displays which would be very acurate and use this to measure the time delay from. There are details at smdn.screenmonkey.org on how to do this.