iMovie does not work with muxed MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 clips

When using any version of iMovie, please note that you cannot import muxed (multiplexed) MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 video clips into projects. If you try, one or more of the following things can happen: iMovie refuses to import the clip and displays an alert instead (such as "File could not be imported because QuickTime could not parse it. -2048"). iMovie allows you to import the clip, however: