Beat meter
A beat meter, also known as a beatmeter or a stroke meter, is a visual cue overlaid on a Cock Hero video to tell the player when to stroke.
Typically, dots or waveforms will scroll across the bottom of the screen, and when they reach a given point, the player is supposed to stroke. How the stroking should be performed is often defined at the beginning of a Cock Hero, but when nothing else is indicated, the assumption is a full up and down stroke for each dot.
Some cock heroes will use other symbols, and some scroll them vertically or in other directions. Another variety is a simple timer countdown or beat countdown in place of symbols. Some, like Cock Hero Prime Game by PrimeSwitch break all all the rules and indicate beats in ways so specific to the given work that they can't easily be generalized.
History
The earliest edit featuring a beat meter is Cock Hero 5 by andyp.[1]
Creation
A beat meter is typically built within the video editing software used by the creator by creating triggers that animate the beats of the music video as dots, waveforms or another graphic.
Several solutions have been built to make adding a beat meter easier for Cock Hero creators, including the Beatmeter Generator software [2][3] by kerkersklave [4] on Milovana, and the BPMTool [5] by pl3b [6] on Milovana.