dv is best - and the quality is absolutely fine for live action type things.
The performance is very consistent encoding is quick - and its totally compatible with all the mini-dv cameras out there.
but it only works at one image size.

if you need other size you have to use photojpeg- the performance isnt as good as dv - but its fine-
it works better than all other codecs - h264 ( all key frames ) works but performance not so good.

animation codec can be very close to uncompressed datarates - so its not a cpu problem but a disc bandwidth problem-

What size of images are your animation files?