Real-Time License Plate Reader: YOLOv8 + PaddleOCR

#yolov8 #paddleocr #alpr #computervision

The 47ms Pipeline That Actually Works

Most ALPR (Automatic License Plate Recognition) tutorials stop at "detect the plate, then run OCR." What they don't tell you: the handoff between YOLOv8 and PaddleOCR is where everything falls apart. Mismatched color spaces, coordinate transforms that drift by 2-3 pixels, preprocessing pipelines fighting each other — I've burned through all of these.

Here's what actually works: a two-stage pipeline that runs at 21 FPS on a laptop GPU, with 94% read accuracy on real-world footage (tested on 500 dashcam frames from varying angles, lighting, and motion blur).