Sediment carrying in water is the essential difference between muddy water irrigation and clean water irrigation. The muddy water and clean water film-hole irrigation free infiltration experiments were conducted to reveal the water-saving and infiltration reduction mechanism of muddy water irrigation. The changes in the infiltration capacity of muddy water film-hole irrigation, the movement distance of the wet front, the moisture content of the wet body, the soil particle composition of the dense layer, and the thickness of deposition layer with the infiltration time were studied. The quantitative model between the soil moisture content and the wet front movement distance was proposed, the relationship between the thickness of deposition layer and infiltration time, and the relationship between the retention amount and the depth of stranded layer had been established respectively. The results showed that sediment in muddy water had a greater influence on soil water infiltration. At the end of the infiltration, the cumulative infiltration of muddy water compared with clear water decreased by 27.83%. The soil moisture content decreased gradually from the center of film hole to the wetting front, the decreasing rate of soil moisture content increased gradually, and the distribution of soil moisture content in the radius of the wetting body was an elliptic curve. The relative content of fine particles in deposition layer was less than that of muddy water sediment, and its physical clay content was significantly lower than that of muddy cement sediment. The infiltration depth from the soil surface to 6 cm could be used as the stranded layer of the film-hole irrigation with muddy water. The content of fine particles in the stranded layer was more than that of the original soil. With the increase of infiltration soil layer depth, the difference between the soil particle composition of the stranded layer and the original soil gradually decreased, and the retention volume of fine sediment particles decreased with the increase of the depth of the stranded layer.