I have my animation and cameras sequenced and seemingly working well, but when I play through the sequence they are very start/stop. In iClone all is smooth. Both the cameras as well as the characters are jerky.
Does anyone have any thoughts or solutions?

It could be a FPS issue. Check out the tutorial...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOlnjHQuSFQ&t=139s

Thank you for this. I had seen this tutorial but it had not quite clicked that the FPS playback rate in iClone is key. I guess I assumed the recording was going frame by frame regardless…not literally recording playback.This IS a let-down (and somewhat surprising actually…). I have a powerful (XeonCPU, Nvidia Quardo p4000 GPU) machine, but even then, I cannot get my play back of iClone to be anywhere near 60FPS (even low poly 40K characters run at like 30FPS).I have created my characters in Character Creator. Using the direct link from CC to iClone created characters so large that that would never work. So I exported an avatar with lower (and frankly, terrible looking) settings. I was able to record at roughly 30fps, and while it is much better, the animation is not good enough and the actual figures are embarrassingly bad looking. I feel I have wasted a few weeks (and several $100) on a solution that in the long run really is not workable. Very disappointing.  

thats strange , all is working fine here , do you have the newest Nvidia Driver? Try from scratch deactivate Soft Cloth Simulation (the flag in the menu) or switch to Quick Mode , you have to get 60fps.
Do you want the best quality in IClone or in Unreal?

First off, thank you for replying.
My goal is for the best quality in Unreal. I am a production designer/filmmaker and over the last year have been using Unreal as my go-to render engine. I have been aware of iClone for years and have used Daz to create still assets for multiple projects. When I learned of the LiveLink I finally jumped onboard. 

All my drivers are up to date (always the first thing I check). I'm using Unreal 4.23. To be clear, I AM able to get iClone to run at 60FPS with low-res avatars, but as soon as I link to Unreal that drops to the 25-35fps range. That is with a low-res avatar with quick-mode (as well as not using the HQ settings in Unreal). I only have 2 characters in the scene.

Slightly separate, but connected to my overall disappointment, I realize the FULL avatar I created in CC is overkill. But the next level down in quality is really a big jump too low visually. I'm surprised the simple action of "Open character in iClone"...or even the LiveLink transfer to Unreal, does not do more in the way of optimization. 

Again, thank you. 

Are your characters clothed and do they have hair in iclone? Dump everything you can from the character, disable gi, shadows and any assets. Just a blank set with a naked bald character. This may help. If it’s still jerky you can try to put iclone if full screen mode (Cntrl+7). That usually give you a few FPS extra in iclone. If two characters is still a problem hide one and record the second on in a separate sequence. Should do the trick. Painful, sure... but it should work.

My "NEWEST" Latest:)  Movie Made With Amaaaazing iClone


—> High Noon”ish” in Narrow Valley<—

To get the smoothest animations , I do the Sequence Recording in UE sometimes with IClone in per "frame mode" and speed up the animations in UE via Play Rate, If you have audio or any sync this is not the best solution, but works good here.
You also can import your finished Animations via FBX and LIVE-LINK only the Cam.

Here you see a Live-Link recorded animation copied over to another project. (only 1 CC character)
Did all what kungphu mentioned above. (ctrl + 7) was a cool tip , thx Kungphu , you have to start with the SPACE Key.
I reached between 55-60 fps

Hi All, 
Thank you for the suggestions. ULTIMATELY (after MUCH back and fourth) the solution has been to sequence both actors separately, as well as the cameras, so 3 separate passes. Also, the actors are run in minimal mode, shaded. No clothing or hair turned on. Just white floating torsos and hands, but it works. This is a LITTLE tedious as there is a battle involved and lining up the hits and such is a little annoying (but I mean, this whole "simple" process is so tedious, what's 6 more steps to the 30 it takes to get this far?).

Again, definitely appreciate all of the feed back. 

Hmmm.... seems odd you can’t get two character in there above 50. When you say the clothing and hair turned off, do you mean hidden? There’s still triangles of geometry. I’d just delete the hair and clothing in incline. Save you character first of course. But in your iclone scene with everything unhidden just a bald belief chacrater. No GI, no shadows no AO basically go through the entire visual tab and disable everything. Then play the animation in full screen mode. I’ve been able to get two characters at about 50fpd. OH I FORGOT!!!! This takes a leap of faith so make you you so a couple passes in iclone to make sure the animation is exactly the way you want it. Once your sure of that, hide the iclone origin in Unreal. You want see anything g on the screen while you’re recording. But this is my last thing I do (if I have to I order to get 50FPS or higher). That will usually give you an extra 3-4 or more FPS. It’s worth a shot. But yeah if not, just record the cameras and one character as the Master scene. Then the other do as sub scenes. In the Master open a subtrack. One you click the plus arrow in the sub scene menu there will be a list of every sequence you have recorded in your project. I like doing this rather than cutting and pasting per the RL tutorials.

My "NEWEST" Latest:)  Movie Made With Amaaaazing iClone


—> High Noon”ish” in Narrow Valley<—