API tokens, not passwords
Machine clients get apt_… Bearer tokens. Admin-managed: create, scope, revoke from the admin panel — no shared logins in your pipeline.
Platform
Your footage becomes programmable.
Every UI action has a REST path — Aperture ships the same API the interface uses. API tokens, HMAC-signed webhooks, rules, audit export, usage metering, SSE events. And when a suite needs the timeline, hand it over in EDL, FCPXML, or OTIO.
The whole loop, machine-callable.
Ingest, transcribe, search, edit, render, share, approve — each step is an endpoint under /v1/*, documented as OpenAPI 3.1 with interactive docs at /docs — 48 documented paths, rate limits published. Every endpoint takes a Bearer token an admin can issue and revoke in seconds.
Rules: event → action
Asset ingested? Transcribe it, tag it, file it into a collection. Rules match on dotted event paths (data.kind, subject.type…), with a dry-run test and a one-click test-fire that publishes a real event — from the API or the admin UI.
Signed webhooks
Render done, review posted, asset ready — webhooks dispatch HMAC-SHA256-signed payloads with bounded retries, a full delivery log, replay, and one-call secret rotation. Your systems act, not poll.
Audit + metering
Every mutation recorded: actor, action, subject, IP, trace id. Export NDJSON or CSV for compliance; usage dimensions flow to the metering API.
Platform primitives
Boring plumbing, done properly.
Multi-tenancy with RLS
Tenant-scoped row-level security on every table. Shared library per tenant; sequence ownership by creator; admins see all.
OIDC SSO
Bearer JWTs from your identity provider are accepted and auto-provision editor accounts. Keycloak-ready.
SSE event stream
Notifications — share created, review posted, render done — over server-sent events and the bell center. Unread state included.
Ops you can watch
/metricsexposes Prometheus gauges (HTTP classes, latency, disk). Nightly backups at 03:00 UTC — pg_dump with 7-day retention plus a MinIO mirror, restore-drilled. Disk guard: ingest answers 507 below the storage floor (2 GB default).Resumable growing uploads
Chunked upload sessions with append, status, and finalize — camera-to-cloud-class ingest through the API, on your server.
Interchange: EDL / FCPXML / OTIO
CMX3600 EDL, FCPXML 1.11, OTIO, and project JSON — leave for Resolve, Premiere, or Pro Tools whenever the job demands it.
Automate the boring 80 percent.
- Ingest lands → rules transcribe, auto-tag, and file it into the right collection
- Render finishes → signed webhook wakes your delivery pipeline
- Guest link created → audit entry, notification, and your Slack via webhook
- Storage and render usage → metering API for invoicing
- Color suite needs the cut → EDL or OTIO out, no re-conform
- Webhook missed? Replay it from the delivery log — every attempt logged, HMAC-verified
"Your media pipeline, programmable — on your own server."
— Aperture, API-first by designShip the pipeline,
skip the glue code.
Tokens, rules, webhooks, audit — every plan talks to the same API the UI uses.