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I've found a really great algorithm for bpm detection and an implementation of it.
I included it as a command line tool. You still have to match one beat yourself as it wont tell you the offset.
But after that you can just insert the basic beats at the detected bpm rate and then add variations by adding additional beats.

I've played around with the program a bit. From the technical point of view I really like where this is going, however UI could really use some work. My personal feelings after fiddling with it below. Don't take them personally - I want the software to be better and easier to access, especially for people that are new to any kind of audio/video editing software - that's why I'm posting them. In no way I wan't to insult you - you're doing an excellent job and you should keep it coming. However in my opinion UI is the hardest pert to get "right", especially when doing this all alone. I'm a software developer myself and personally I prefer to get a ton of feedback (even if that means I have a lot to change) because then I know exactly what to do to improve my software next time I sit down and start coding.

1. Overall view of the interface is quite confusing. There's labels missing (new user doesn't know what the big middle slider does for example). The most confusing thing to me was the buttons that are just clumped together - group them up and give them categories (see GroupBox) - things like Playback Controls, Add Beats, Save/Load, Info etc.

2. The waveform being the main part of the program could use some polish. The slider is something not many expect when it comes to navigating it. A much much better approach would be adding drag support (left and right) with zoom (mouse scroll and +/- buttons somewhere in the corner of the waveform).

3. Snap to grid! To me personally this needs to happen. Add a grid (vertical lines) so that you can snap the beats to them and be as accurate as it's possible easily and automatically. Overall I'd change the way the beats are added (the overall workflow) but that's something I've described at the end of the post.

4. Beats cannot be dragged and moved in time with mouse.

5. Maybe I'm wrong but I didn't find any place in the program where I could change the beat sound.

6. The way the waveform is displayed isn't really helpful / doesn't give much information about that's actually happening in the song. Check how Audacity (or any audio program really) does it. People are used to it, stick to it.

7. It would be nice to be able to just start the editor by doubleclicking some exe. Having to deal with command line arguments is sometimes the thing that pushes many people away, as it gives an impression you're dealing with something very unfinished (I know it's easier for us, who do the coding :) ). Command line arguments - at least to me - are good only for debugging purposes or for people who REALLY want to play with the program, often in unintended ways / untested features.

8. Some kind of video preview would be nice, although I'm aware how difficult it might be to pull off. Not necessary, just nice to have.

9. Shortcuts - at least spacebar to play/pause would be nice.

As for the workflow / adding beats - I really imagined it to be different. After all, this program is supposed to be something to give better and quicker results. Maybe not as flexible as when using other audio editing software, but definitely easier and more intuitive.
Having said that, here's what I imagine such program to be like (sorry for my awful painting skills, I don't even have access to mouse right now..):

Thank you for your feedback.
There are shortcuts listed on the website, and in the mean time, there are also tooltips showing when you hover the buttons.
Also, you can not change the beat sound in the editor. You can however change it when generating the final wav file form the beat file. (Just run the programm without any command and it will show a list of cmd options).

With respect to "snapping" the question always is to what kind of grid? To a basic BPM? Then what if that changes over time and so on? What you can do in the version of the tool right now is add a basic BPM sequence and then paste patterns over it. As a workflow this works quite well.

With respect to your other points, such as dragging, clicking and so on: yes, that would be nice, and I've thought of that.
But all of this will require a lot more work into the GUI and I am probably only motivated to do that, if there is enoug interesst in such a tool.
I've used the latest version now to match the beats in a short video myself, and if you know, what the buttons all do, and you do know the shortcuts listed on the website, then it is quite smooth to work with.

If there is enough interesst, at some point I will probaly do a total redesign of the UI.
This UI is basically to figure out, what is needed, to get the job done. So the plan is basically:
- get all features in that are needed with as little implementation work as possible
- when I am confident I know what I need, design a good UI

I'm not sure whether I will get rid of the cmd-line interface. This is very flexible especially for the generation of the beatmeter. I can add options easilly. And editing videos requires at least some minimal technical knowledge.

Thanks for the answer. Now Working

Great. Please let me know if you have any issues. And you might want to download a new version now and then as I am currently working on it.

And some more news:
I've added a "flying bubbles" style beatmeter, here is an example video:
http://motherless.com/45ED010

(See the first post for a picture and for the link to the original video.)

It also shows how well the BPM-detection is working. The basic bpm is exactly what it detected without any manual corrections.

I watched the video of the bubbles example and it looks great. With a little more fine tuning I would absolutely use this for my CH production once I get all the videos edited together.

A feature that I would want though (or could add manually I guess) is a small popup indicating beat changes so that the player doesn't have to watch the beat meter the whole time. I'm not a fan of beat meters in general (takes the eyes off the prize and essentially gives you an out from losing IMO) but as long as there is a prompt of when the beat changes it's okay that way you don't have to look at it other than to get a feel for what the beat is. Also different options for beat ticks would be nice.

I am very impressed with this work! I am curious how the beats were detected around 3:23 when it changes from the fast bursts of beats to the normal paced ones. Because the beat noise covers up whatever is being sensed It is hard to understand. I will have to download in a few days and try your program myself.
The example seems to me to be a difficult song to automatically create beats for, but you seem to have done it.

Thanks for the work.

@Woogity
What kind of "fine-tuning" are you thinking about? I just want to know exactly what to improve.
I thought abought adding beat change indications etc., this would be easy to do in the video generation part, but it would mean that I have different kinds of labels on my beat track, so it would require to make the editor more complicated. So I probably will do that only after a complete workover of the UI.

@hosenguy
I hope you did not missunderstand: the tool only detected the overall beats per minute of the song, e.g. something like 123.65
I then used that to add a beat (you can add a pattern of constant beats with on click in the editor).
All the rythms you can see are inserted manually by adding beats between the base beats and aligning them equally. it is very convinient to design patterns this way though. Once you have one pattern you can just copy and paste it.

So it is no problem if the song has parts, where the beat is hard to detect as long as it does not change during these parts. This example is just to show that beat detection is able to detect the basic beat accurately even if there is a lot of rhythm in the song.

I don't think it is possible to detect rhythms with usable accuracy. Maybe if you have a simple percussion track. But if you have everything mixed to gether it is too hard to even detect a single beat. I suspect there are no tools that can do that. Also it is something, that you really want to decide. You don't want to pick up every rhythm in a song for your beat track but want to generate patterns that can be stroked to. Most cockheros do not even care that much about rhythms but impose some stroke pattern on the song and just want to match it to the basic beat.

kerkersklave wrote: Sun Jun 25, 2017 11:06 am @Woogity
What kind of "fine-tuning" are you thinking about? I just want to know exactly what to improve.
I thought abought adding beat change indications etc., this would be easy to do in the video generation part, but it would mean that I have different kinds of labels on my beat track, so it would require to make the editor more complicated. So I probably will do that only after a complete workover of the UI.

The fine tuning I'm looking for before I would 100% use it is:

The option to have a beat change indicator like I said above
The option to change the shape/size of the beat meter as well as the tick noise
If some of these are in already I'm sorry that's great I just watched the example video

A stretch goal would also be including beat tick noises to songs with beat change indicators, but being able to remove the meter? It might seem like it removes the main application feature but allowing for both types of CH beat productions could make every creator happy

You can change the beat noise from the command line.
Also you can change certain things about the beatmeter, e.g various positions and colors. You can even change the pictures used to draw it, but you'd have to look at the inluded images and fiddle arround a bit if you want that.
Underneath I have a pretty flexible infrastructure now, so if you want a particular style, just tell me and I tell you, how to do it.

Once I have the indicators (which will come after a new UI probably), removing the meter will be easy.
Showing some indication text however is pretty easy in even the most basic video editing tools, so I don't think, this is a priority.

Thanks for the tool! I will test it with my cock hero and tell you how it went

kerkersklave wrote: Sun Jun 25, 2017 11:06 am @hosenguy
I hope you did not missunderstand: the tool only detected the overall beats per minute of the song, e.g. something like 123.65
I then used that to add a beat (you can add a pattern of constant beats with on click in the editor).
All the rythms you can see are inserted manually by adding beats between the base beats and aligning them equally. it is very convinient to design patterns this way though. Once you have one pattern you can just copy and paste it.

Actually thought that was the case, but was real confused after the complex example you linked. The structure of the program as you describe sounds real helpful. More thanks for the explaination.

This will also be valuable for the electro-stim creaters when a beat track is not available. May need custom beat sounds for this so I will mess with the program and likely have more to ask you later.

Much appreciated.

kerkersklave wrote: Sun Jun 25, 2017 2:20 pm You can change the beat noise from the command line.
Also you can change certain things about the beatmeter, e.g various positions and colors. You can even change the pictures used to draw it, but you'd have to look at the inluded images and fiddle arround a bit if you want that.
Underneath I have a pretty flexible infrastructure now, so if you want a particular style, just tell me and I tell you, how to do it.

Once I have the indicators (which will come after a new UI probably), removing the meter will be easy.
Showing some indication text however is pretty easy in even the most basic video editing tools, so I don't think, this is a priority.

Ah so it's already usable to what I want it to do. Awesome I'll definitely be using this for my release and that alone will speed it up by a few months most likely.

I'll give you a shout out in my video and anyone else who uses it should too. The potential for new content creation using this tool is huge because the beats are the hardest part of making a CH video at the basic level.

I can't open it on Windows 7.

I'm sure i have the latest version of Java Runtime.
I only can do it through the CMD, but i am not able to open the GUI.