sentences: This paper presents a new method for detecting and recognizing text in complex images and video frames. Text detection is performed in a two-step approach that combines the speed of a text localization step, enabling text size normalization, with the strength of a machine learning text veri3cation step applied on background independent features. Text recognition, applied on the detected text lines, is addressed by a text segmentation step followed by an traditional OCR algorithm within a multi-hypotheses framework relying on multiple segments, language modeling and OCR statistics. Experiments conducted on large databases of real broadcast documents demonstrate the validity of our approach. ? 2003 Pattern Recognition Society. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.