AVB can mean several different things depending on where it appears, which is why confusion is common; when you’re dealing with an .AVB file extension, it usually refers to an Avid Bin from Avid Media Composer that stores organizational metadata like clips, subclips, sequences, and markers while the actual audio/video lives separately in places such as `Avid MediaFiles\MXF`, and because it’s an Avid-specific format, you open it only inside Avid, with offline media typically pointing to missing media rather than bin corruption, whereas outside Avid, “AVB” can also mean unrelated networking or Android-security terms that don’t function as openable files.

In pro A/V and some automotive Ethernet setups, AVB can mean Audio Video Bridging, a group of IEEE standards that provide time sync and reserved bandwidth for real-time media over Ethernet—something tied to network configuration, not file formats; in Android firmware and modding, AVB usually means Android Verified Boot, a security system that checks partitions during startup using things like `vbmeta`, again not a typical double-click file, and in rare legacy cases `.avb` might even be a Microsoft Comic Chat Character file if it didn’t originate from an Avid project.

How an AVB file is opened hinges on which AVB format you’re dealing with, but if it’s an Avid Bin (.avb), it must be opened inside Avid Media Composer by selecting the correct project and opening the bin there, after which items appear as Avid assets; Media Offline usually signals missing media rather than bin failure, so ensuring the `Avid MediaFiles\MXF` drive is available and running Relink often fixes it, and corrupted bins can often be restored using Avid Attic backups.

If your “AVB” is the networking term Audio Video Bridging, there isn’t an openable AVB file, since AVB is about synchronization and bandwidth on Ethernet, handled through hardware/software configuration; if it’s Android Verified Boot, you work with firmware data like `vbmeta` using developer utilities instead of a viewer, and if it happens to be a legacy Microsoft Comic Chat Character file, only the original software or a retro-compatible environment can load it.

An Avid Bin (`.avb`) does not store actual audio/video, because it’s meant purely as metadata describing what clips exist, how sequences are arranged, which timecode portions you used, and what markers you placed, while the heavy media resides in MXF directories like `Avid MediaFiles\MXF\…`; if you copy only the `.avb`, you’re just moving the edit blueprint, not the underlying media, so Avid will open it but show Media Offline until media is connected or relinked, and this architecture keeps bins small and shareable—so an `.avb` by itself cannot “play” unless paired with its media or another exported format.