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Renaming a .zip extension in the files app?
Does anyone know how to rename a .zip extension to a .dslibrary extension? I try this on the Files app but it just stays a .zip extension. I am trying to import a Decent Sampler file...
Comments
if you have audioshare you can change the extension there
Um ... is that really what you need to do? is a .dslibrary file a compressed zip archive? I doubt it.
Have you tried de-compressing the zip file to see if the .dslibrary file is archived inside? A .zip file is one or more files compressed and archived together into a single file. Normally you would accomplish nothing by changing the extension as the app you're trying to import to would have no idea what to do with such a file.
Usually when you simply tap on a zip file in the files app, it automatically decompresses the contents. Do you have a link to the file you downloaded?
I’m just following the directions the DS developer gave.
There’s a Decent Sampler download on piano book of a family grand piano. I have downloaded it and my instructions were to rename the .zip extension to a .dslibrary extension so that it can be loaded into DS.
The samples and .dspresets are inside of the file I zipped.
Now I’m hunting for an app that can change the file extension properly.
OK, sorry for the bad advice. I didn't look into the Decent Sampler documentation. It's unusual for an app to use a .zip file simply by changing the extension. Odd practice, but I suppose understandable for a free cross-platform app.
What you mean unusual like Word docx files? 😂
I changed the extension name properly, but it still doesn’t work. Ugh
Anyway, here’s the cool video that inspired me:
@klattgalvin What exactly are you doing that doesn't work? Start with how you changed the filename. Then how you are trying to get it into the app. Does the app have an "import" mechanism?
I think the Files app may be smarter than you imagine. It can probably recognize the file type and its associations by more than just the name extension. I remember classic Mac OS with its data forks and resource forks.
This is how I did it:
But I didn’t do it with the Family Grand Piano, because it’s more than 1 GB.
Instead I used Slinky Violin on the Decent Sampler website.
https://www.decentsamples.com/product/slinky-violin-free/
It downloaded to my iCloud Drive as a zipfile (150 MB).
After that I unzipped it on iCloud. Just tap on the zipfile
and it automatically creates a subdirectory with the
Slinky Violin.dslibrary in it.
Then, after opening that subdirectory, just tap on the
Slinky Violin.dslibrary. That opens up Decent Sampler.
From there you go to the upper right corner (FILE...) and
choose Load. That brings you back to the iCloud subdirectory
where (in my case) I could tap on the Slinky Violin.dslibrary.
After a couple of seconds I was presented with a box where
I could choose 1 of 5 presets for Slinky Violin.
I guess the same procedure must work for Family Grand Piano.
^this. That seemed what would make sense to me (without having read the documentation).
Actually, I saw this quite often, on multiple platforms, for both zip, ar, cpio and tar files.
Even ZFS stream files are just tarfiles, as are NetBackup archives, but they use different filename endings.
And for zip, this is also common, even for packages from programming languages, but I cannot remember where exactly I saw this.
I think Debian packages are just *.ar files and files from iThoughts are just *.zip files.
The list goes on and on.
This is often needed, when you don't want to invent your own compressed file format, but want your App to bind to a file name ending and enable to open those files automatically with your App.
EDIT: And was this not the same for some sound fonts files, or something similar? Just a renamed *.zip file.
It isn't that strange. I have a number of apps that use zip format with a different extension to keep their files together.
Well, anyway, it appears I was right. The zip archive needs to be unzipped to find the right files. Renaming it was not the right answer.
Everyone is overlooking the clue that the file was provided from the app's web site as a zip file with the .zip extension. If the developer was using zip files with a custom extension, they would have just supplied it with that extension. There would be no purpose in providing another extension.
For how many comments there are in here, some of the advice is really not helping OP.
The SlinkyViolin file downloaded from the DecentSampler website comes as a zip with a .dslibrary file in it.
The Family Grand Piano download he is talking about does not come with this file type/structure.
This is the advice on the youtube video he linked: "Note: Due to Apple’s sandbox conventions on the iPad you need to do this little workaround to get this running: Make a .zip containing the "samples" folder as well as the ".dspreset" file(s) and then rename the file extension from ".zip" to ".dslibrary". Then it can be loaded with Decent Sampler via the loading menu."
He just wants to rename a .zip to .dslibrary. Semi-lecturing him about why that's weird is kind of silly. We have now established with some helpful people this is a common data thing in 2021.
You can indeed unzip, then rezip select files in Files. For changing the extension, as someone said earlier Audioshare can do it by importing a file, changing the name without keeping the extension...then re-exporting it back to files. A bit awkard.
I did try doing this all on my PC earlier today btw OP, I didn't actually get it working by following the instructions either.
@urbanvanilla You might try to reverse-engineer the .dslibrary file that works (Slinky Violin?). See if you can get a listing of exactly the files that are there (zip -l in Unix command-line). I suspect that the files may be zipped without the containing folder, and that the folder may be confusing the app. Just a guess, of course.
Thank you! This is indeed the case.