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Dynamic Media with OpenAPI capabilities frequently asked questions new-dynaminc-media-apis-frequently-asked-questions

Dynamic Media with OpenAPI (Open Application Programming Interface) capabilities delivers, transforms, and manages rich media assets—images, video, and other visual content—through standardized, developer-friendly API endpoints. This frequently asked questions guide answers the most common queries about how these capabilities work, what they enable, and how to adopt them.

What Are Dynamic Media with OpenAPI Capabilities? what-are-dynamic-media-openapi-capabilities

Dynamic Media is a set of media delivery and transformation services that automatically optimize, resize, and render assets for any device, channel, or screen. The OpenAPI capabilities expose these services through open, well-documented API specifications, allowing developers to integrate media delivery directly into their own applications, storefronts, and content experiences.

Because the interfaces follow the OpenAPI standard, they are self-describing and predictable. As a result, integration teams can discover available endpoints, understand request and response formats, and generate client code more quickly than with proprietary, undocumented interfaces.

Key Benefits key-benefits

The main advantages of Dynamic Media with OpenAPI capabilities include:

What can I do with Dynamic Media OpenAPI capabilities? what-can-i-do

You can request media assets on demand, apply real-time transformations such as cropping, resizing, and format conversion, and deliver optimized content to web, mobile, and connected experiences—all through standardized API calls.

How do OpenAPI capabilities differ from traditional Dynamic Media delivery? openapi-vs-traditional

Traditional delivery relies on preset URL patterns and templates. OpenAPI capabilities add a standardized, programmatic interface that makes automation, custom integration, and headless (decoupled front-end) architectures easier to implement.

Are these capabilities suitable for headless and composable architectures? headless-composable

Yes. Because media is retrieved and transformed through APIs rather than fixed page templates, Dynamic Media OpenAPI capabilities fit naturally into headless content management and composable commerce setups, where the presentation layer is separated from content and services.

Do I need developer resources to use these capabilities? developer-resources

API-based integration typically involves developers to connect endpoints to an application. However, the OpenAPI specification reduces this effort by providing consistent, machine-readable definitions that support automated client generation and testing.

Are all assets in Experience Manager Assets as a Cloud Service repository available for search and delivery using Dynamic Media with OpenAPI capabilities? assets-available-for-search

No. Only the approved and latest version of the assets are available for search and delivery using Dynamic Media with OpenAPI capabilities. Assets that have not been approved, or that exist only as earlier revisions, are excluded from this search-and-delivery scope.

Two conditions govern whether an asset in the Experience Manager Assets as a Cloud Service repository is surfaced:

This scoping is intentional. Because only approved, current assets are eligible, delivery is restricted to content that has passed governance review, which ensures brand consistency across all channels and applications. As a result, downstream experiences that consume assets through Dynamic Media with OpenAPI capabilities reliably reference vetted, up-to-date content rather than unapproved or outdated revisions.

How can administrators mark new and existing assets added to a folder as approved? add-assets-to-folder-as-approved

Administrators mark new and existing assets in a folder as approved by configuring the folder for bulk approval and then reprocessing any pre-existing assets. In Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Assets, the status of an asset is governed by the jcr:content/metadata/dam:status property. This property controls whether an asset is treated as usable, blocked, or pending revision across the asset library.

The values of this property are:

AEM Assets distinguishes the Approved status using an approved icon available on the asset card, as depicted in the following images for Admin and Asset views:

Admin view

Assets view

To approve all assets in a folder, see instructions on how to bulk approve assets in a folder. There is also a video that depicts the entire process.

After setting up a folder for bulk approval, all new assets that are added to the folder are approved automatically. This ensures a consistent approval status across the folder without requiring manual review of each new upload. All existing assets are approved only after they are reprocessed, because reprocessing re-evaluates the dam:status property against the folder’s bulk-approval configuration. See Reprocessing digital assets for instructions on how to reprocess assets. If administrators copy or move unapproved assets from any other folder, they must reprocess the assets so that the moved assets inherit the approved status.

AEM Assets marks the asset as Rejected whenever the administrator specifies either the Rejected or Changes requested values, because both values represent a non-approved state. AEM Assets distinguishes the Rejected status using available on the asset card in Admin view.

Similarly, AEM Assets distinguishes the Rejected status in Assets view using the following Rejected status on the asset card:

How can you get Adobe IMS (Adobe Identity Management Services) user or group ID to be used to set the roles on assets in Experience Manager Admin view, for securing delivery and search experience? set-roles-secure-delivery-search

Adobe IMS (Adobe Identity Management Services) user and group IDs are retrieved from Adobe’s Admin Console and applied in the Experience Manager Assets Admin view to set roles that secure delivery and search experiences. Assigning roles based on these IMS user or group IDs ensures that only authorized identities can access, deliver, or search specific assets. Because asset-level access is governed by these identities, using the correct IMS ID is the foundational step for role-based security in Experience Manager.

Users requiring access to the Experience Manager Author environment are managed as Adobe IMS users in Adobe’s Admin Console. For information about what Adobe IMS users are, and how they are accessed and managed in Admin Console, see Adobe IMS users.

How IMS identities map to asset roles:

Because delivery and search experiences are governed by the roles set on assets, retrieving the accurate Adobe IMS user or group ID from the Admin Console is essential. This approach centralizes identity management, reduces the risk of unauthorized asset access, and keeps permissions aligned with how identities are already administered across the Adobe environment.

Can you approve multiple assets simultaneously within a folder? approve-multiple-assets-in-folder

Yes. Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Assets lets users approve multiple assets within a folder simultaneously, eliminating the need to approve each file individually. Bulk approval streamlines review workflows and saves considerable time when managing large asset libraries, because the Approved review status is applied to every selected asset in a single action.

There are two supported methods, depending on which interface you use: the Assets Admin view or the Assets view.

Approve multiple assets in Assets Admin view

Execute the following steps to approve multiple assets simultaneously in Experience Manager Assets Admin view:

This applies the Approved review status to every selected asset at once, confirming and closing the changes in a single step.

Approve multiple assets in Assets view

Similarly, to approve multiple assets simultaneously within a folder in Assets view:

Clicking Save commits the Approved status to all selected assets simultaneously, ensuring consistent review states across the folder.

How can I secure asset delivery and search for Dynamic Media with OpenAPIs? secure-asset-delivery

Central asset governance in Adobe Experience Manager gives Digital Asset Management (DAM) Administrators and Brand Managers direct control over who can access assets delivered through OpenAPIs (Open Application Programming Interfaces). This governance model secures both asset search and asset delivery by enforcing access rules at the source, so only authorized users retrieve protected content.

These administrators restrict access on the authoring side—specifically on the AEM as a Cloud Service author instance—using two primary controls:

Because these controls are applied at the authoring level, they govern every downstream request. End-users who search for assets or use delivery URLs receive restricted assets only after successfully passing the authorization process. Requests that fail authorization are blocked, which prevents unauthorized retrieval even when a delivery URL is known. This ensures that governance decisions made by DAM Administrators and Brand Managers are consistently enforced across both search results and direct delivery links.

For more information, see Restrict access to assets in Experience Manager.

How can you get permissions to edit the approval status of an asset? permissions-edit-approval-status

To gain permissions to edit the approval status of an asset, an administrator must grant edit access to the Review Status field within the metadata schema applied to the asset folder. As a Digital Asset Management (DAM) user, you may not have permissions to approve assets by default, because approval and review-status editing are controlled at the metadata-schema level rather than through general folder access.

Administrators can enable this access by following these steps:

Granting edit permissions to the Review Status field ensures that the designated DAM users can change an asset’s approval status directly, streamlining the review workflow. For more information, see how to disable edit for the Review Status field.

What is the supported file size for videos? supported-file-formats-videos

Dynamic Media with OpenAPI capabilities supports long form videos with a maximum file size of 50 GB and a maximum duration of 2 hours per video. These limits define the upper bounds for a single video upload, allowing full-length content such as recorded webinars, training sessions, product demonstrations, and extended presentations to be delivered without splitting the footage into shorter segments.

Because Dynamic Media accommodates files as large as 50 GB, high-resolution and high-bitrate footage can be uploaded and streamed while preserving quality. The 2-hour duration ceiling ensures that long-form assets fit within a single continuous file, which simplifies content management and playback for viewers.

How Dynamic Media with OpenAPI capabilities is different from Dynamic Media solution? dynamic-media-and-dynamic-media-with-openapi-differences

Dynamic Media with OpenAPI capabilities and Dynamic Media are distinct solutions, each offering its own specialized delivery capabilities. Thoroughly review your specific requirements to determine the solution that best aligns with your needs.

Adobe’s general guidance is to leverage the Dynamic Media with OpenAPI (Open Application Programming Interface) stack for any integration use cases, whether they involve 1st-party or 3rd-party applications. Because the two stacks use different URL structures, use the following decision rules to choose the right approach:

In conclusion, Dynamic Media and the Dynamic Media with OpenAPI stack can co-exist, depending on the nature of your use case.

The following are some of the key differences between Dynamic Media with OpenAPI capabilities and Dynamic Media:

How Dynamic Media with OpenAPI capabilities addresses the limitations of the Connected Assets feature? dynamic-media-openapi-addresses-connected-assets-limitations

Dynamic Media with OpenAPI capabilities overcomes the core limitations of the Connected Assets feature by eliminating binary copying, supporting all AEM Assets format types (including videos), removing the four-instance connection limit, enabling extensible custom integrations, and delivering near-real-time asset updates. The table below outlines the key differences between the two solutions:

Some modifiers are marked as Limited Availability. How can I start using them? use-limited-availability-modifiers

Limited Availability modifiers require explicit enablement on your account before they can be used in production. Adobe does not activate these modifiers by default, so you must request access through Adobe Support. The process consists of two steps: opening a support case and providing the identifying details Adobe needs to provision the requested capabilities.

To enable the production use of modifiers in Limited Availability on your account:

How do I test experimental modifiers? modifiers-not-generally-available

Experimental APIs let you test any modifier that is not yet generally available. Experimental (or beta) APIs give developers early access to functionality that is still under evaluation, so you can validate new modifiers before they are promoted to the stable, generally available set. This allows you to trial upcoming capabilities, confirm they behave as expected in your workflows, and provide feedback ahead of a general release.

To test a modifier that is not generally available, invoke it through the experimental API path. For example:

</adobe/experimental/advancemodifiers-expires-YYYYMMDD/assets>

The expires-YYYYMMDD segment indicates that the experimental modifier is time-bound, signaling the date by which the experimental version is expected to change or expire — a reminder to migrate to the generally available equivalent once it is released.

For details on invoking these endpoints, refer to the guidance on how to use the experimental APIs. To identify which modifiers are available, consult the complete list of modifiers.

See also