Hi, kialua,
does it look choppy? Doesn't look choppy here. Where do you notice it, in the headline? As it is three words moving over each other it appears choppy on first site, I first thought that too, if you look closer then you see that all three actually move smooth.
There can be different reasons why Flash appears jerky. Your computer (Flash is rendered a lot on the client), the browser, your download line, the server hosting the site etc. I looked at the designoffice.org with Firefox 3 / Mac using a fast line (27 MBit/s effective) from Germany (server is probably in Germany).
The second reason can be data size. Flash dynamically loads pages, i you give it too much to load and your line is slow, it might looks strange. Therefore avoid large data (like hires pictures).
The third reason can be "too much happening at the same time", especially on slow computers or computers having a lot run in the background.
About the hand, it is a preference setting in Interactive Designer. You can specify what you want to show (even per object).
Best
Matthias