> I am using Kanotix 2005-04

So am I. And, yes, I have used Kaffeine succesfully with a variety of formats,
including quicktime. When I first started kaffeine (actually konqueror did),
it checked my system for available libraries and informed me about
missing ones (in my case libdcss).

Perhaps uninstalling/reinstalling will help. In case of undeleted config files
in your home directory, run "strace kaffeine | less" and look for files it successfully
opens.

Oops, correction: my kanotix is 2005-03.