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I just bought a violin. It comes with the yellow color rosin that doesn't seem to apply well to the bow hair. I've been applying it like for 30 minutes but it doesn't seems to improve at all. What could have gone wrong?
I saw some tutorials that say I should use some sand paper or something on the rosin. Is this true?
Yes - new rosin is shiny and so won't get applied to the bow hair (it simply slides along the bow).
You'll need to scratch the the rosin, either with sandpaper or, (as my teacher used to do) with a penknife, until there's a layer of white dust on the rosin. You should then be able to apply it to the bow.
Many violinists have some powdered rosin somewhere which is great for "starting off" a new bow with rosin - like you've observed, it's quite a tedious process otherwise. I'd stress that it does bed in eventually, and will work, but you need to keep at it for a fair while (I've done it this way on many occasions.) As mentioned above, you can also use sandpaper to "shave off" some powdered rosin from the block, essentially mimicking the behaviour of the above.
Powdered rosin does get a bit messy though - for a long time I actually used cello rosin with my violin - the difference is it's a bit softer, and again this can help it grip much better to fresh hair. So if you plan to try out many new bows, that may be a good investment for all it costs (not much.) Double bass rosin would be softer still, though in my experience this is so soft that it can get way too sticky in warm weather, which tends to make it go everywhere.
My orchestra teacher taught us to use the metal end of the bow to "loosen" the resin
