diff --git a/src/eynollah/eynollah_ocr.py b/src/eynollah/eynollah_ocr.py
index 9ed02d4..9cc2c9a 100644
--- a/src/eynollah/eynollah_ocr.py
+++ b/src/eynollah/eynollah_ocr.py
@@ -296,13 +296,11 @@ class Eynollah_ocr(Eynollah):
                     probs[ver_index > 0][flipped_ver_is_better] = probs_ver[flipped_ver_is_better]
 
             def nooov(x):
-                return x != b'[UNK]'
+                if x == b'[UNK]':
+                    return b''
+                return x
             for pred, prob in zip(preds, probs):
-                text = b''.join(
-                    filter(nooov,
-                           map(bytes,
-                               (filter(None, char)
-                                for char in pred.tolist())))).decode('utf-8')
+                text = b''.join(map(nooov, pred.tolist())).decode('utf-8')
                 extracted_texts.append(text)
                 extracted_confs.append(prob)
         del cropped_lines_rgb
diff --git a/src/eynollah/predictor.py b/src/eynollah/predictor.py
index 526223a..6b7fe96 100644
--- a/src/eynollah/predictor.py
+++ b/src/eynollah/predictor.py
@@ -191,13 +191,19 @@ class Predictor(mp.context.SpawnProcess):
                         #result = self.model.predict(data, verbose=0)
                         # faster, less VRAM
                         result = self.model.predict_on_batch(data)
-                    if isinstance(result, tuple):
+                    def make_shareable(x):
+                        # convert tf.string/np.object to fixed-length bytes
+                        # (because object segfaults in shm)
+                        if x.dtype is np.dtype(object):
+                            return x.astype(bytes)
+                        return x
+                    if isinstance(result, (list, tuple)):
                         multi_output = True
-                        results = zip(*(np.split(result0, len(jobs))
+                        results = zip(*(np.split(make_shareable(result0), len(jobs))
                                         for result0 in result))
                     else:
                         multi_output = False
-                        results = np.split(result, len(jobs))
+                        results = np.split(make_shareable(result), len(jobs))
                     #self.logger.debug("sharing result array for '%d'", jobid)
                     with ExitStack() as stack:
                         for jobid, result in zip(jobs, results):
diff --git a/src/eynollah/training/models.py b/src/eynollah/training/models.py
index 9111225..eda6b0f 100644
--- a/src/eynollah/training/models.py
+++ b/src/eynollah/training/models.py
@@ -82,18 +82,17 @@ class CTCDecoder(Layer):
         inputs = tf.math.log(
             tf.transpose(inputs, perm=[1, 0, 2]) + tf.keras.backend.epsilon()
         )
-        # tf.nn.ctc_greedy_decoder() is not as precise
         # tf.compat.v1.nn.ctc_beam_search_decoder() also needs merge_repeated=False
-        decoded, logits = tf.nn.ctc_beam_search_decoder(
+        # tf.nn.ctc_beam_search_decoder() is not supported by ONNX, yet
+        # tf.nn.ctc_greedy_decoder() is not as precise, though:
+        decoded, logits = tf.nn.ctc_greedy_decoder(
             inputs,
             lengths,
-            beam_width=10,
-            top_paths=2,
         )
         # get top path for all sequences in batch
         decoded = decoded[0]
-        logits = logits[:, 0] - logits[:, 1]
-        probs = tf.exp(-logits)
+        logits = logits[:, 0]
+        probs = tf.exp(-logits / n_steps)
         # convert to dense
         outputs = tf.SparseTensor(decoded.indices, decoded.values,
                                   (n_samples, n_steps))
@@ -555,8 +554,6 @@ def cnn_rnn_ocr_model(input_height=None, input_width=None, n_classes=None, max_l
         voc = char2num.get_vocabulary()
         num2char = StringLookup(vocabulary=voc, invert=True)
         output = num2char(out)
-        # avoid output tf.dtype=string → np.dtype=object (which cannot be shm-ed)
-        output = tf.io.decode_raw(output, tf.uint8, fixed_length=max(map(len, voc)))
 
         return Model((inputs, inputs_bin), (output, prob))
 
@@ -585,8 +582,6 @@ def cnn_rnn_ocr_model4inference(model, model_path):
         voc = char2num.get_vocabulary()
         num2char = StringLookup(vocabulary=voc, invert=True)
         output = num2char(output)
-        # avoid output tf.dtype=string → np.dtype=object (which cannot be shm-ed)
-        output = tf.io.decode_raw(output, tf.uint8, fixed_length=max(map(len, voc)))
         inputs = (inputs, inputs_bin)
         outputs = (output, prob)
         return Model(inputs, outputs)
diff --git a/src/eynollah/training/reload-models-v0.8.mk b/src/eynollah/training/reload-models-v0.8.mk
index ef74bdc..022603e 100644
--- a/src/eynollah/training/reload-models-v0.8.mk
+++ b/src/eynollah/training/reload-models-v0.8.mk
@@ -59,8 +59,6 @@ $(MODELS_DST)/%.h5: $(MODELS_SRC)/%
 $(MODELS_DST)/%.onnx: $(MODELS_SRC)/%
 	if jq -e '.task == "segmentation" and .backbone_type == "transformer"' $</config.json &>/dev/null; then \
 	echo skipping $@: vision transformer architecture currently does not work with ONNX; \
-	elif jq -e '.task == "cnn-rnn-ocr"' $</config.json &>/dev/null || test x$(findstring _ocr,$@) = x_ocr; then \
-	echo skipping $@: OCR CTC decoder does not work with ONNX; \
 	else \
 	eynollah-training convert \
 		$(and $(wildcard $</config.json),--rebuild) \