Content:

• Do not submit items that contain pornography or extreme grotesque violence.
• Do not have the "Auto-Focus" feature on. This can cause your image to be blurred. If voters can't see you, they can't choose you.
• Do not shoot without proper lighting. Make sure you have natural light..."the sun" or a lamp should be aiming at you, not behind you.
• Do not have your date stamp on when recording. Make sure that you can't see the time and date in your viewfinder when you are recording.
• Do not sit or stand too far away from the camera. If possible set up the camera 4 feet away from you. No more, no less.
• Do not sit or stand too close to the camera. Voters should see your head and shoulders on your tape.
• Do not have music or noise in the background. Make sure that you are in a quiet place when you record. Don't have music or a TV on in the background.
• Sit down and tell us a story. The majority of your casting tape should look like this. Be creative, have fun, get crazy and most of all, keep it "real!"
• Be sure to put in proper, accurate search tags so your item can be easily located.

Title and Description:

• Write an appealing title and description that best describes your casting submission. Make sure that there are no spelling mistakes in the text.
• Write a catchy title that will attract the viewers' attention.
• Write a meaningful description, but try to avoid long stories. Don't ruin the punch line.
• Your item will be rated higher if the text you write is interesting. Users look at the whole picture when they rank items.
• Your video could be seen by millions. Think about this when you compose your text.

What is the best format to use when submitting videos to The Real World Casting?
The recommended specifications for video submissions are:

• Codec: MPEG4 (AVI, MOV or MP4)
• Aspect Ratio: 4:3
• Frame Rate: 25fps or 30fps
• Audio: MP3 audio codec

• MPG, MPEG, MPE, AVI, WMV, WMF, ASF, M1V, DIVX, MOV, MP4, FLV, 3GP, RM, RMVB, RV and RAM.

What is a codec?
A codec is used as a way of compressing video, images and audio to a more manageable size.

What is the MPEG4 codec?
MPEG-4 is one of the latest (audio and video) standardized compression methods, designed specially for low-bandwidth (less than 1.5MBit/sec bitrate) video/audio encoding purposes.

Probably the best-known MPEG-4 video encoders are called DivX and XviD, which both are nowadays fully standard-compliant MPEG-4 encoders.

What is Aspect Ratio?
The term Aspect Ratio refers to the width of a picture (or screen) in relation to its height. Ratios are expressed in the form "width x height". For example, a 4×3 ratio means the picture is 4 units wide by 3 units high.

What is Frame Rate?
Frame rate is the number of frames or images that are projected or displayed per second. In computer video streams, the frame rate describes playback rates for AVI and QuickTime movies. The video playback rate for an AVI or QuickTime movie directly relates to the perceived smoothness of its playback. The higher the number of frames playing per second, the smoother the video playback appears to the user. Lower rates result in a choppy playback. (For reference, film uses 24 frames per second to achieve smooth playback.)

How do I convert my file to MPEG4?
There are countless methods and ways to convert video files from one format to another and numerous software packages that are capable of such conversions. One example of a free, simple and easy way to convert videos files to the MPEG4 codec can be found using Blaze Media Pro which is available for download for a 15 days evaluation period at http://www.blazemp.com/downloads.html

Note: This program requires a pentium processor, 128mb RAM, a 30mb hard drive, a sound card and a CD-ROM drive.

Useful links
Here are a few links to other websites which contain useful video information. This page will update periodically:

• http://www.mightycoach.com/articles/mm2/index.html - All you need to know about using Windows Movie Maker
• http://www.virtualartroom.com/dv_windows_moviemaker.htm - How to edit digital video with Windows Movie Maker 2
• http://www.apple.com/support/imovie/tutorial/index.html - A very helpful iMovie tutorial from Apple
• Blaze Media Pro download page - For download and support