ActionScript 3.0 :: Using BitmapData For Drawing Graphics?

I've seen the BitmapData object used for graphics a fair bit, especially in games. Many of these cases have done things in somewhat fundamentally different ways, and I was wondering what the best way generally is.

Method 1: Each animation frame is kept in a separate BitmapData object using an array.

Method 2: The animation is kept in a strip using a single BitmapData object and using the "sourceRect" parameter of copyPixels.

The draw and hitTest methods appear not to provide any "sourceRect" parameter. Most of the code I have seen using method 2 has worked around this by copying the bitmap frame into a temporary bitmap for these methods. This seems like quite a large processing overhead to me. Using method 1 this is generally not a problem, unless hitTest needs to be used with scaling and/or rotation, in which case a temporary transformed copy is still needed it seems as hitTest doesn't except a transformation.

I'm thinking method 1 is the better choice since it avoids having to make temporary copies for the most part, and I don't think it would waste much memory (just the duplicated width, height, etc values?). Is this generally true or is there a reason lots of people seem to do things the second way?

Also is there a better way to use hitTest for bitmaps that have been scaled, rotated, etc?