I pulled the hard drive, and put it in a known working machine, to see if I could recreate the issue. Qmaster did the exact same thing on the other machine, which now leads me to believe that this is a software issue between Qmaster and Compressor.
I've copied the log from the Batch Monitor on my latest attempt, to see if anyone recognizes anything going wrong:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<services>
<service address="tcp://172.16.170.101:50028" type="requestprocessor:com.apple.qmaster.contentcontroller" hostName="administrators-mac-pro.local" displayName="NP Edit Bay 3">
<logs tmt="05/11/2011 11:08:46.024" pnm="unknown" tms="326819326.024">
<mrk tms="326819399.127" tmt="05/11/2011 11:09:59.127" pid="237" kind="begin" what="service-request" req-id="493DE98F-3B31-45D8-9A85-EA432234E119:1" msg="Preprocessing job."></mrk>
<log tms="326819399.283" tmt="05/11/2011 11:09:59.283" pid="237" msg="Source file is local - we will try hard-linking."/>
<log tms="326819399.284" tmt="05/11/2011 11:09:59.284" pid="237" msg="Hard-linked source file to cluster storage."/>
<mrk tms="326819399.287" tmt="05/11/2011 11:09:59.287" pid="237" kind="end" what="service-request" req-id="493DE98F-3B31-45D8-9A85-EA432234E119:1" msg="Preprocessing job request end."></mrk>
<mrk tms="326819399.326" tmt="05/11/2011 11:09:59.326" pid="237" kind="begin" what="service-request" req-id="1FF9A6BE-5F95-49AF-AE68-82B0A576B968:1" msg="Preprocessing."></mrk>
<mrk tms="326819399.332" tmt="05/11/2011 11:09:59.332" pid="237" kind="end" what="service-request" req-id="1FF9A6BE-5F95-49AF-AE68-82B0A576B968:1" msg="Preprocessing service request end."></mrk>
</logs>
</service>
<service address="tcp://172.16.170.101:50942" type="servicecontroller:com.apple.stomp.transcoder" hostName="administrators-mac-pro.local" displayName="NP Edit Bay 3 3">
<logs tmt="05/11/2011 11:10:24.731" pnm="unknown" tms="326819424.731">
<log tms="326819424.731" tmt="05/11/2011 11:10:24.731" pid="228" kind="mrk" sub="error" what="get-log" avail="false" msg="Service is down."/>
</logs>
</service>
<service address="tcp://172.16.170.101:50973" type="servicecontroller:com.apple.stomp.transcoder" hostName="administrators-mac-pro.local" displayName="NP Edit Bay 3 6">
<logs tmt="05/11/2011 11:10:24.734" pnm="unknown" tms="326819424.734">
<log tms="326819424.734" tmt="05/11/2011 11:10:24.734" pid="228" kind="mrk" sub="error" what="get-log" avail="false" msg="Service is down."/>
</logs>
</service>
</services>
Any help anyone could offer would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!