The CloudFit built-in exercise library has close to 2,000 (and growing) unique exercise videos for you to use in your workouts, ranging from standard bodyweight exercises, strength and powerlifting moves all the way through stretching and core exercises. We’re not stopping there - adding more exercises to the built-in library every few months to make your job - running the best fitness classes - as easy as possible.
However, at CloudFit, we do understand the built-in library may not be suitable for everyone. Maybe you have some unique exercises for your studio, or maybe we are missing less common exercises from our built-in library. Or perhaps you want you, or your own trainers up on the TV screens to make your classes a fully customized and branded experience for your studio.
To address these use-cases and make CloudFit infinitely flexible, we added the ability to easily and seamlessly record and upload your own custom exercise videos -- directly from your smartphone and for more custom features check here. Since adding this feature we have seen our users upload thousands of their own custom exercise videos!
As more and more studios upload custom exercise videos, we started seeing clear best practices form around how to effectively record videos so they look professional. In this blog post, we wanted to share those learnings so you too can get started adding custom exercise videos to your studio and workouts.
Tip #1 - Avoid the pure white background
It takes tons of effort, set up and post-processing (and therefore cost) to record professional exercise videos with a pure white background like those in the CloudFit built-in exercise library. We highly recommend avoiding this approach unless you are willing to invest significant time and money. You are welcome to contact us to discuss this more as we can give some high-level guidance on the effort and costs involved.
It may seem like a pure white background is the only way to make a video look professional but we’ve seen many examples where videos still look fantastic even with clean, simple backgrounds (see below for examples!).
Tip #2 - Lighting lighting lighting
We can’t stress this enough. Good lighting is key to ensuring your videos look great.
At a minimum we suggest you get some studio lighting. This will give you a bright and even lighting on your model and reduce any unnecessary shadows.
Tip #3 - Simple backgrounds look best
Simple backgrounds that highlight your brand work best. Every gym is unique and has their own style and brand. It’s best to choose a background that highlights this. Check out what some of our customers are doing!
Tip #4 - Use a tripod
Videos come out decently while hand holding a modern smartphone and shooting your exercise videos. However, if possible, we recommend using a tripod (either for your smartphone or attached to a digital camera). This ensures an absolutely stable video recording, plus the framing will remain consistent across exercises.
Tip #5 - Keep them short and start/stop at the same position
Most exercise videos are less than 3 seconds long. Make sure that your model starts and finishes the rep in exactly the same position. This ensures that the video can be cropped and looks smooth when looping on screen.
That's it for our video best practices. Let us know how you go, if in doubt get in touch with your account rep! To test out the CloudFit video upload feature, install the CloudFit app [Apple App Store \ Google Play] and get started for free today.
✌️🤩 CloudFit Team
