OCR service failed. request contains invalid argument

wanted to post this here before i open a case with smartbear.

a few weeks back i started noticing that some of my test cases were getting this OCR service failed error message when it was attempting to click on a tab object to select it. The details of the message are:

i can run this test case on my local workstation without any issue and if have run it on our automation VM successfully using the Network Suite. But when it runs on that same VM having been triggered by an Azure pipeline it takes this error (see attachment). 

at first i was using the OCR.Recognize in this manner 

OCR.Recognize(Aliases.NuPoint.frmContainer.MdiTabGroupControl).BlockByText("Teller").Click();

when that starting getting the error i developed a function that did the recognize on the whole tab structure,

  let objTabs = Aliases.NuPoint.frmContainer.MdiTabGroupControl;
  let objRecognizedText = OCR.Recognize(objTabs);

then i got the block count (number of tabs), initiated a for loop looking for the tab text "Teller" then clicked that block and did a break out of the for loop. 

as i said, worked great locally and on the VM via Network Suite but still fails on the VM pipeline when it encounters the OCR.Recognize statement.

  let objRecognizedText = OCR.Recognize(objTabs);

shown above with the "Request Contains an invalid argument"

Has anyone encountered this. my workstation and VM's are running the latest version/release of TestComplete/TestExecute.