I've been using rails for the past 2 years, and have had mixed feelings about it. I ported two rails applications to MERB, because I'm no longer using ActiveRecord, so most of the other stuff in Rails also seemed unnecessary. Prior to ruby/rails I used python (straight up mod_python) for a couple years.
I am starting on a new project where I need to make a video site. Think youtube with limited users and functionality. My initial plan was to do the front-end in MERB and the back end with ruby hooks around our custom video server (c++). However I vaguely remember that writing wrappers around c++ was easier in Python. Thus I thought maybe I could just do the whole thing in Python. I don't really want to use Django. Is there anything similar to MERB in the Python world? Or should I just use MERB for the front end and then use whatever fits best for the video processing. THANKS.
Have you looked at Pylons? From what you're describing, something like Pylons would probably fit your needs fairly well. From what I've read, it seems very light weight and modular. You can use any type of ORM or none. You can use any template language you wish or none. It might be what you're looking for. The documentation isn't anywhere near as good as Django, but you're probably familiar enough with web deb on Python that you probably wouldn't need it.