Dev.to
7/18/2026

Building a 15-Second Teaser for The Odyssey Illustrated — in Go, Not Python
Short summary
The author built a 15-second teaser video from 228 graphic novel panels and explains why Go outperformed Python for this task. Python's issues: Pillow loads full images into RAM (1GB+ for 228 frames), MoviePy wraps fragile ffmpeg subprocess calls, the GIL limits CPU-bound resizing to one core, and runtime type errors surface late. Go's standard library handles PNG decode/encode natively, the type system catches dimension mismatches at compile time, and deployment is a single static binary.
- •Go's standard library handles image decode/encode with zero external dependencies vs Python's pip/ABI issues
- •Python's GIL and full-RAM image loading make batch video processing painful
- •Go's type system catches dimension mismatches at compile time, not after processing 50 frames
Generated with AI, which can make mistakes.
Is this a good recommendation for you?



