diff --git a/subwave_nowplaying.star b/subwave_nowplaying.star
index 3f1240e..ba87818 100644
--- a/subwave_nowplaying.star
+++ b/subwave_nowplaying.star
@@ -112,7 +112,23 @@ DEFAULT_STATIC_OVERLAY = "on"
 
 # How far in the album art zoom goes, relative to its fully-zoomed-out rest
 # state (see _art_widget below for why scale never goes below 1.0).
-ZOOM_LEVELS = {
+# 1x-only reduction: a busy/high-detail album cover (a "NOW" compilation,
+# reports of an overrun with moderate zoom on one) pushed worst-case
+# payload up -- the breathing zoom cycling through a wider scale range
+# means more genuinely distinct crops to encode over the animation. 2x
+# keeps the original values -- confirmed it has more buffer headroom on
+# that hardware, per earlier discussion, so this is deliberately not a
+# blanket reduction. Verified against a real "NOW"-style compilation
+# cover: the reduced "moderate" (1.25) measured ~297-316KB across
+# several runs, vs ~329-336KB at the original 1.4 -- a real, repeatable
+# margin gain, not just noise from the glitch segment's own randomness.
+ZOOM_LEVELS_1X = {
+    "off": 1.0,
+    "subtle": 1.1,
+    "moderate": 1.25,
+    "strong": 1.45,
+}
+ZOOM_LEVELS_2X = {
     "off": 1.0,
     "subtle": 1.15,
     "moderate": 1.4,
@@ -183,7 +199,8 @@ def main(config):
         station_url = station_url.rstrip("/")
 
     colors = COLOR_SCHEMES.get(config.get("color_scheme", DEFAULT_COLOR_SCHEME), COLOR_SCHEMES[DEFAULT_COLOR_SCHEME])
-    zoom_scale = ZOOM_LEVELS.get(config.get("zoom_level", DEFAULT_ZOOM_LEVEL), ZOOM_LEVELS[DEFAULT_ZOOM_LEVEL])
+    zoom_levels = ZOOM_LEVELS_2X if scale == 2 else ZOOM_LEVELS_1X
+    zoom_scale = zoom_levels.get(config.get("zoom_level", DEFAULT_ZOOM_LEVEL), zoom_levels[DEFAULT_ZOOM_LEVEL])
     zoom_position = config.get("zoom_position", DEFAULT_ZOOM_POSITION)
     static_overlay_enabled = config.get("static_overlay", DEFAULT_STATIC_OVERLAY) == "on"