is it fake or true?

Fake, notice, when the bulb lights and goes out, or the motor starts and stops, one had goes out of sight..

I have to admit when I saw him use a magnet at the beginning I had a faint flicker of hope that I was going to see him winding wire around the nails and spinning them in some way..

fake

Ha... quite funny... you can almost see the hair-fine wire in the shadow of his hand when he does the motor.....totally fake...

>>>you can almost see the hair-fine wire

same here, I can't see any wire!

The one hand is clearly flipping a switch under the table any time anything turns on or off.
There is no reason to assume any visible thin wires. My assumption (which is very likely) is he swapped the candles out on one of the camera angle changes and there are nice normal wires connecting the nails to the switch (and batteries) under the table. Not a very clever trick.

If I was doing it, I would have had a friend under the table hitting the switch so it wasn't as obvious what was going on.

If the flames were creating some EM field which generated a current, it would certainly vary with the intensity of the flame. However, the bulb is immediately at "full" power, as the flame begins and intensifies, where you would expect to see it "bloom".

...and three rubs of a magnet back-and-forth does nothing to magnetise the nails, so as soon as you see non-directionality based half-assed 'just eh throw some magic dust sprinkles of magenetic charging on it" attempt there, thats the giveaway that absolutely zero of what follows would be approaching real.  If you really wanted to sell it, rub one nail outwards, the other nail inwards, that at least also sets you up to say 'important, this one must be the ground' since they two otherwise identical units then have a difference required for a differential-based system like electricity :)

I was giving him the reasonable doubt that he'd already magnetized the nails and was just demonstrating the process.  

The candles must also be specially made.  Waxes are highly resistive and will not conduct and neither will the wick.  My guess is there is a mesh metal screen inside the candle with which the nail makes contact.  The rubbing with the magnets and the lighting of the candles is just a side distraction for the viewer.

According to what PaulHews gave me the information, it is true.

It is named Thermocouple.

Please, take a look at this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermocouple

No no. Paul is not saying the video is true, he is saying that there are ways to convert heat to electricity. The video is fake for all the above reasons.

Watch the video again. The idle hand always moves below the table to the same spot every time anything turns on and off. Also, the light is steady, not flickering. The video is certainly a fake.

Ok, I understood now.

The video was a trick with some fundamentals principles, that is, a mixed between true and fake

Exactly. The idea of turning heat into energy is real so some people could be convinced that this is what was happening in the video. Also, things like the potato/lemon powered clocks make it look like just another cool science trick.

However, the way he does it isn't anywhere close to a way that would work and you can see him hitting the switch under the table.

thanks very much