Importing quicktime video into iMovie

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What do you mean by distortion, what type of compression is used by your source video, See This

OK, It's difficult to suggest what it might be caused by, it sounds as though you are going through a couple of processes to get a movie from a disc into imovie, what sort of disc is it, how are you copying to your desktop.

Think of a Quicktime movie as a container, sort of like a plastic carton, a tin can or a cardboard box, you've told me what type of container it is (Quicktime), it would be helpful to know whether you have beans, milk or tea bags in the container. ie the compression formats and size etc. follow my link above and let quicktime tell you these things.

Your movie has a non standard frame rate, this would be a problem but I'm not sure it would result in the problem you describe. (Also since it's non-standard, it may indicate some type of corruption)

I'm assuming this is the information about the file on your desktop, how did you get it to your desktop from the disk, what sort of disk is it.

I really can't be sure if the frame rate is causing your problem but it's going to produce some sort of problem, where did the disk come from, any chance you could get another one.

You might try converting it in another program such as mpegstreamclip or quicktime pro if you have it, to the same frame rate as the project settings you use in imovie, but I don't particularly know if this will help.

I'm having the same problem. Helping a friend put together a small movie, no idea what camera they used but I presume a small stills digital camera.
I can't import the original mp4 files because they are squashed to 4:3 and heavily interlaced. So converted them to Quicktime H264, de interlaced and put it back to proper aspect ratio. Same terrible import quality. So far I've tried encoding in Handbrake, Compressor and to DV all of them import with terrible redish blotches and are unwatchable.
First time I've come across something like this in iMovie.