Note that this is a slight different from a Perl plug-in (and may not apply in your case), but since you say you essentially want a free Flash replacement, it's worth it to note that you can create Flash with Perl. It is a bit more cumbersome than using Tk, though.
Yeah, see Flash slideshow with audio where I use Ming and Swftools. I'm just getting into SWF::Builder, and it looks good. It plays audio, and has more advanced features like keying on frames. I'm going to study it a bit.
I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth.
flash japh