Not knowing where to start

I've got this project idea, but I'm not sure where to begin.. I haven't even bought Max/Jitter.. don't really know too much about it accept I presume it may be the right solution, or at least a part of the right solution.

Here's some of the questions I have..

Can you have multiple video streams going into you're computer, and have Jitter do stuff with those streams? Can you make it so a couple of those streams are like.. screen casts / grabs.. how about pre recorded video. Can you take that stream and cast it out to the web in real time?

I sorta assume that some of this might be possible.. but.. I wonder how complicated it might be to work out how to do it.. and.. if additional hardware were necessary.. how expensive this sorta thing might be.

Another question is how efficient is jitter for playing with video.. which gets to a scaling question.. the extreme of what I can imagine ever wanting to do would probably involve a series of .. lets say 3K projectors set up in the round with the audience in the center? I'd assume one would need a number of computers working together to realize something like this, is this doable?

What's the 3D look like? What's the complexity looks like if.. say.. I wanted to export models/texture maps/animation stuff.. from something like Cinema 4d?

I'm no developer.. but I do have a super rudimentary idea of how to architect software.. but my only real experience is with Adobe Flash.

What little I know about Max/Jitter is that it is extendible, and that there is a lot of stuff that's freely to commercially available.. and that if there were stuff related to what I'm trying to do, that could greatly effect the complexity of it.. So I wonder if anyone knows much about this.. or even where to start researching this sorta thing.

Thanks for any help anyone can give, I greatly appreciate it