Hi Airkarol,
I have done this many times in a theatrical setting. I do not know what your budget is on this project,or what your control needs are, ie. just cueing, or real time cue adjustmen. So I will offer a few solutions that have worked for me in the past.
The cheapest. If you only have the need to run one projector at a time, I would reccomend using quicktime pro. Convert the DVI signal to componet or S-video, run it to a mixer, with a preview monitor. The mixer will act as an external display, you can drag the quicktime pro file to the preview screen and hit "cmd F" in qucktime to make the movie full screen for that display. Make sure loop is enabled if your content needs to repeat, then you can fade up the mixer from "black" and there you go. If you have a video Matrix in line, you can switch outputs, for different parts of the show. But if you need to run differnet content, different places simultaniously you need to spend a bit more money...
Option 2: If you have the need for better control, and more outputs The cheapest program that can handle this respectivly is called Isadora,
http://www.troikatronix.com/izzy-applications.html It is quite useful, you can create custom patches to suite your needs, I use this program often and quite successfully. If you only have one machine and you need multiple outputs from it, check out purchasing a Matrox triple head to go, it fools the cpu into thinking you have a super huge diaplay, but Isadora will interpret it as 3 displays each running at 1024x768. Which is what your projectors will be running at. Isadora is just under $300. This is by far the most bang for your Buck in terms of theatrical video production. It can be set up to recieve a MIDI input, so cues can be synced with the audio playback program SFX, quite succesfully, as well as syncing other machines running Isadora. The biggest limitation Isadora has, is it runs in the form of percentages, so true timecode is not an option, so depending on the scale of your production this might be an issue.
Option 3. A more expesive option would be to use Datatons "Watchout" program.
http://www.dataton.com/watchout this is an ideal program to use, as it is infinilty expandable and offers a ton of options. basically you have one master cpu networked to other slave cpus. The main cpu has the interface controls for cueing the show, and a timeline effects, edgeblending for multiple projectors etc, and is really easy to use. each projector has its own slave cpu, which recieves content via ethernet from the master depending on what contend is needed for said projector. Watchout is inifitly expandable, where as Isadora will slow down the more outputs you add to the processor, as watchout has a processor/video card for each projector, so this is not a problem. I belive the starter system with 3 network nodes is around $6K last time I had to purchase some. you supply your own cpus, I reccomend a windows based cheapo box with decent graphics and ok HD for the slaves, and the most powerful mac you can afford as the master ( yes it is dual platform)
Other Options:
After watchout, there is a huge price gap, you have now entered the realm of rock and roll tours and broadway. With media servers and all their glory, there are many on the market. My personal favorite is the Hippotizer
http://www.green-hippo.com/ this is hands down the most powerful media server availble, it renders everything in realtime with 8layers per output, each machine has 2 outputs, an unlimited amount can be synced togetther, they can be controlled and cued via a DMX lighting consol, the grandMA works especially well with a hippo. If you can afford these, they are the best option hands down, they even do pixel mapping. The fact that everything is done in real time with no lag is what makes the $20-40,000 price tag depending on the model worth it. Each machine is custom built and absolutly amazing, I use the Hippotizer whenever I am on a show that has the budget to buy/ rent them.
I hope this helps, feel free to contact me with any questions..Also remember that if there is a black out in your show, video black will be seen on stage, you will need to rig up some dowsers, if you can afford them city theatrical makes some cool dmx controlled dowsers, if not there are plenty of homemade solutions I would be happy to share. GOOD LUCK!
