I really love the film community in DA and I'm one of the submitting member, so in this journal I'd like to help fellow deviant who wants to be a submitting member but doesn't really sure what to do or the deviant who is a new member of DA film and have some basic questions for submission. Actually, what I've written here was taken from the FAQ although there's a few bit in them which are my tips for you

About Film in deviantART

The film team: ^deviantartfilm
This is the main account in which the film community in deviantART is guided. There's already some clubs in DA which supports the film community too like ~DemoReel ~deviantFilms or *dAFilmSpot but for more information and updates of this community, you may watch ^deviantartfilm

About the film which is accepted on DA
The deviantART only accept a film work which is originally yours or the one which is not fully yours but you have a permission on. Usually the second one occurred because of the music you used or a fan-based film.
For the music part, if you used a copyrighted music or a piece which you didn't have a permission on, you can either change the music or upload it without sound. More about it, read HERE!
For a fan based film, DA will accept it only if you have done 100% of the work, no manipulation of the legal source is allowed. And when copying a character or idea from an established source, it's best if you credit them
DeviantART doesn't suggest you to promote your music work on this site for now because of the copyright issues surrounding it. That doesn't mean the DA didn't want to accept any music video clips at all, (they even had a gallery category for it!) you're still allowed to upload a music video which you created yourself and promote the visual part. Oh, yeah, of course you'll need the permission on the music too if they are not yours
If there's any of the submission violated these rules, it will be taken down later

How Do I become A Submitting Member of The Film Community?
For this, you should have at least one sample of your film work uploaded in the web. Its preferred if you just send a link to a video from a fast loading place like youtube, but even if you wanted to give a .zip/ .rar files instead, it's still need to be uploaded somewhere before the film team can review it. Attaching files to the email is simply not the way to go, unless the reviewer had specifically asked you. After that, submit them by filling out the Film Application Request. The application reviewing and approval process can take anywhere up to a month but usually not more than a couple weeks.

And now, this was taken from `guruubii's journal
When processing application we come across situations that make the act of processing them slow to a crawl! Lemme give you some pointers on making your application fast an easy to process for u, so we don't end up slowing down even more!

Small Files: I know your best work might be 10-20 minutes long, but we can discover your mad skills in less than 5! It's kinda a bummer to have to load a 20minute film just to review it. It would be really helpful if you kept the files you want to apply with short and sweet. If you have a long film, formulate a trailer type format, or take some of your best scenes, or submit your demo reel! It would really make a big difference in the speed we proccess applications. On that note, uploading your best quality file to your own website is really nice, and the quality is wonderful, but its a bitch to load that behemoth. shrink that sucker down! Make it fast and furious!

Host on youtube: YouTube sucks monkey balls, thats for sure. but there is one good thing about it. They load fast! if you host your work on there for us to review it makes it really easy to process them! Don't worry about how youtube butchers the quality of your film! we just need to check for certain things, and we know the mess youtube makes and we can see past it for the purposes of processing your application

Don't host on sites that require user logins: I wont sign up for every site out there just to view your film which requires me to login to view it. You might get lucky and I might already be a member of that site, but it wastes a massive amount of time logging into these other sites or having to create an account to view your stuff. To me, thats an invalid link. Make sure your film is viewable to the public.

Don't lie: Don't lie about your music rights. When I review an application, and it says "there is no copyrighted material in my submission" and then I load a David Bowie fan video, your credibility drops 100 points. If you don't know where you got your music from, it doesn't mean that its not copyrighted.

Read the FAQ, and know what you are filling in the form for!: There's a novel idea!! Then we wouldn't have so many applications with .gif's, .jpegs, or "what is this?" in the comments of the form. seriously. Filling out any form, you should know why you are doing it thats just common sense.

Paste a simple link: Not an embedded file code, not html. the form says "paste a link" so do that. Not a file path from your hard drive, not a link to your deviantart account, not a link to your youtube profile page. a link to a FILM or ANIMATION. one file, so when we click that link, it loads in a browser window and plays and we can say yes or no to your application in the time it takes you to fill out the form.

There are of course a million other things you could do to speed it up as well, but these are main ones I am noticing today

How Is The Result?
You'll know when you get accepted via a note. The film team will send you an invitation into the film community with that. Don't forget to accept it through the link in the invitation within one month time! Otherwise the invitation will be expired and you'll need to resend a request to renew it again.

Accepted! Now What?
Congratulations! Now you have the film privilege and may start uploading your films! And do you know that everybody who had accepted the film privilege will have one invitations which can be accessed through here? Make use of this! Invite someone on the DA whom you know can create some good films like you!
Now you'll need to know some more conditions in which you may submit a film on DA:
1. Make sure that your film's runtime is a minimum of 10 seconds and does not exceed 20 minutes or 200MB. If so, you will need to cut the film or split it into a few parts.
2. Almost all of film format is accepted here, but for flash, it has to be converted first with tools like swf2avi (or uploaded to the flash gallery instead) because the film gallery didn't accept .swf.
3. To balance submission size vs quality, DA recommend 640 px wide and 30 frames a second, in .mp4 or .mov format with h.264 compression on high quality, 2 pass, audio in 128 bit aac stereo 44.1 khz. But anything goes, actually
Sometimes there's some cases where the films won't upload or seemed like never ending uploads, which probably caused by incompatible format or you should refresh the page first (usually this occured to firefox browsers). Just try to refresh them in a different page The format which usually works for me is .avi with divX compressor, 25 fps, and 32kHz or 44.1kHz stereo sound. The divX compressor is available in the Adobe Premiere and After Effects.
Click if you wanted a divX converter

I've Succeeded Uploading One!
Nice, now I'll tell you some special features and the difference a film submission has!
1. There's a few preview thumbnails for films, you may change that preview picture a few frames forward or backward. Remember to choose an interesting shot, so that when somebody saw them, they'll be captivated by it and want to watch it later!
2. There's a creators list too on the submission page. Don't forget to fill them with your other co-creators' DA name and their respective position, if there's any other people worked with you for that piece. For now, that section only takes DA's existing account names, but expect to put more names in there sometime in the future Putting the account names there enables them to give some creator comments later if they wanted to.
3. After submitting, you'll notice the 'annotations' feature and 'creator comments' feature. Annotations enables you to put comments or creator comments in some part of your film. And the creator comments enables you or other co-creators you listed to upload files along with their own comment. This section accepts all image and document files eg. Jpg, png, txt, doc, pdf etc. And therefore, you may upload your resume there
4. If sometime later you wanted to edit your film submission, you may still edit the creator comments or preview thumbnails, but not the film itself. If you really wanted to change it, you have to delete the previous submission and upload your new version as a new submission! This is because if you changed the film, the annotations, comments, and other things won't be relevant anymore.

If you want to browse the FAQ for the film subjects and more updates of the issue just click here

I hope this helps you, if you still have questions even after reading the FAQ, it's best to ask in the in the film forum, film chat, or you may ask me here. I'll try my best to answer your question.