Patent ID: 7181045

Claim:
A method for reading the addresses of items of mail, an image of the surface of each item of mail having the address information being supplied to an OCR device for automatic evaluation and, in the event of the address information not being recognized unambiguously, the associated image with partial results from the OCR device being passed on to a video coding device having a plurality of video coding stations for video coding, comprising the steps of: generating an extract, in the event of an ambiguous read result from the OCR device, by agreed extraction rules, from address alternatives as a partial result from the OCR process, and determining a number of extracts which agree or disagree such that: in the case of predominantly or only different extracts, performing extraction coding by means of the video coding device with the agreed extraction rules, and in the case of predominantly or only identical extracts, performing selection coding for the address alternatives transmitted to the video coding device with the image, if the number of address alternatives does not exceed a maximum value.