i've heard that VLC is crap. VLC = ffmpeg with a gui. that's about it.
i've also heard that VLC has broken MPEG-2 support, broken H.264 support, and a lot of other broken stuff.
if you want ffmpeg done right, you use ffdshow or mplayer(mplayer's builds are better but mplayer doesn't have a GUI that i know of for windows). also ffdshow and Media Player Classic go great together. i'm using celtic_druid's latest builds and they are working great for me.