Yes, but if you’re in doubt, you can always use the anatomical labels such as AP instead.
This might be due to there being lots of b =0 images, which topup takes ages to process – see this recent thread on this issue.
Very. The distortion correction assumes the distortions are along that direction only. If you correct along the wrong direction, you’ll get the wrong correction.
Only if your data contain enough information in the right format for MRtrix3 to figure out the phase-encoding direction by itself. Otherwise, you’ll need to know. But the distortions are typically obvious enough that you figure out by simple looking at the data, right?