is Frank for real in the Festool HQ video❓

[MacBoy]

For the new video put out by Festool HQ in Germany, Frank is speaking English.

In the videos published by Festool HQ Germany, I’ve only seen Frank speak German. However, I’ve not watched all of his videos.

In the new video’s lower-right corner, it says “AI generated translation”.


Is the AI translation simply the closed captions / subtitles

Is the AI also doing an auto-dub of German-to-English of the voice and also substituting the mouth movements


Anyhow, this seems to be why Festool USA released Sedge and colleagues from employment in Nov 2025. It’s all being created within Festool HQ for worldwide distribution.


10-1/2 minute video — amazing that there is so much to cover across the wide range of Track Saws

 

[luvmytoolz]

He does speak english (bearing in mind this was 6 years ago):

Thread 'Festool’s Julian and Frank is out with yet another “English” video '

Apr 25, 2020

Hope this continues, glad to see FT doing videos like this.
=share

• FestitaMakool
• Replies: 2
• Forum: Festool Tools & Accessories

 

[onocoffee]

In YouTube Land, you can upload your own srt files for captions in multiple languages or rely upon the system to generate them for you. If translations are not available, as a viewer you can select Auto-Translate as well.

The curious thing is that Frank's voice and lips don't always seem to match. I came across this video earlier today while driving, clicked on it and watched just the first few moments as Frank started speaking and even then I thought it the sync was curious. But I just went to listening as the light turned green.

For a German, his accent sounds oddly affected by the British Isles. Don't know if that's an indication of A.I. generated voice or just how he is, but in comparing to the 18v Training video, he sounds in that video, much more like the Germans I know speaking English, but I don't know Frank (or Jack, for that matter).

 

[PaulMarcel]

Recently on Instagram, a home inspector re-shared a reel. While it was playing from the story view, it was in English. It only showed the first part of the clip so I tapped through to see the whole reel. There, it played in German. It was wild. Watched it a few times in both views. The English had small lip sync issues, but it was still impressive since it was his voice. That I know of, they don't have a facility to upload multiple dub tracks and auto-select for the viewer.

 

[mino]

In YouTube Land, you can upload your own srt files for captions in multiple languages or rely upon the system to generate them for you. If translations are not available, as a viewer you can select Auto-Translate as well.

The curious thing is that Frank's voice and lips don't always seem to match. I came across this video earlier today while driving, clicked on it and watched just the first few moments as Frank started speaking and even then I thought it the sync was curious. But I just went to listening as the light turned green.

For a German, his accent sounds oddly affected by the British Isles. Don't know if that's an indication of A.I. generated voice or just how he is, but in comparing to the 18v Training video, he sounds in that video, much more like the Germans I know speaking English, but I don't know Frank (or Jack, for that matter).

You can also upload alternate voice streams.*) Basically proper dubbing, the same like (the better) movies are dubbed. The viewer can then select the language in the video.

This is also the correct way to do this, in fact, for a company of Festool calibre. That said, IMO Sedge covered a different, more interactive, audience. So I do not think these are related. At least not directly.

EDIT:
*) my understanding, saw this done even before the late LLM sprawl, though my memory can be wrong as PM notes

 

[Stone Message]

Frank is a lovely guy....



Peter

 

[onocoffee]

Love it!

 

[Coen]

They should just upload one video with different sound tracks. Seems Festool placed only one audio track with this video... and it has the Ai-English Frank.

I absolutely detest this push to Ai-translate everything. On Youtube mobile there isn't even an option to turn it off. When I watch debates from my own Dutch parliament... it wants to Ai-voiceover it in English. You have to go to desktop mode to turn it off. Ridiculous.

As long as it's native, I don't care if it's English, Dutch or German.

 

[MacBoy]