Every year or two, the hockey organizations for whom I officiate go through rule change cycles. USA Hockey, the major organizing body of amateur ice hockey in the United States, is changing their rules this year. The National Collegiate Athletic Association changes their ice hockey rules every year. Even organizations like The National Hockey League have annual or semi-annual rule changes.

Each of these organizations produce rule change videos which are designed to help players, coaches, and officials understand the new rules. They also help to explain any new rule interpretations, which have been as important as the actual rule changes over the past two or three years.

Before I got my iPhone, I would wait until an officiating seminar to see the rule change videos for these organizations. If I was really ambitious, I'd stream the rule changes from the USA Hockey or NCAA hockey websites, if they made the videos available there. This year, I have an iPhone and I want to be able to watch the videos more frequently, so I get up to speed on the new rules faster. It only makes sense for me to get the videos and convert them to an iPhone-appropriate format so I can watch them anytime I have a few minutes to kill.

I haven't found the USA Hockey rule change video on their website yet, so I don't know which formats they have already produced. I'm hoping to get a DVD sent directly to me. The NCAA Hockey Rule Change Video is available on their website in WMV format. I don't think that the WMV video format is supported out-of-the-box by my iPhone.

I'll probably end up getting a package like Cucusoft iPhone Video Converter + DVD to iPhone Suite or Video Vault for the iPod, both of which claim to convert a bunch of other video formats to MPEG4.

I'm just at the beginning of my research into this, but I wanted to mention the work I'm doing up front in case anyone wants to provide any suggestions. In any case I'll follow up with an explanation of how I get the videos on to my iPhone and whether they look good once I get them there.