I am pretty sure @theo did the direct show player. There is also a directshow hap player http://forum.openframeworks.cc/t/ofxdshapvideoplayer-windows/21237
that you can try using and maybe that will work better. That hap player is also based off the directshow implementation though by a different author.
As for knowing the limitations of the video players thats a bit tricky since a lot of video play back is handled by either direct show or windows media foundation and they handle playback differently. If you want the ability to set the speed I have a fork that allows for it but I have had pretty poor results with reverse playback.
https://github.com/DomAmato/ofxWMFVideoPlayer
I would try different codecs as some work better for indexing and variable playback while others are better compressed or less lossy etc... its why there are some many different codecs