diff --git a/subwave_nowplaying.star b/subwave_nowplaying.star
index ce873e3..1a055d6 100644
--- a/subwave_nowplaying.star
+++ b/subwave_nowplaying.star
@@ -87,17 +87,22 @@ def main(config):
     return render.Root(child = content)
 
 # Album art gets a slow "Ken Burns" breathing effect: eases from the full
-# frame in to a zoomed-in crop of the top-left corner, then back out, on a
-# continuous loop -- not a one-shot reveal. A one-shot version (start
-# zoomed in, end on the full frame, then hold) looked jumpy: since the app
-# re-renders on NOWPLAYING_TTL and each fresh render restarts its own
-# animation from tick 0, whatever the *previous* pushed image happened to
-# be showing at that moment gets abruptly replaced by a fresh zoomed-in
-# frame. The back-and-forth loop doesn't eliminate that (a server-side
-# re-render always restarts at tick 0 regardless), but ending exactly where
-# it started means the animation also loops seamlessly on-device between
-# refreshes, which in practice reads as far less jarring than a one-way
-# reveal that snaps back.
+# frame in to a zoomed-in crop, then back out, on a continuous loop -- not
+# a one-shot reveal. A one-shot version (start zoomed in, end on the full
+# frame, then hold) looked jumpy: since the app re-renders on NOWPLAYING_TTL
+# and each fresh render restarts its own animation from tick 0, whatever the
+# *previous* pushed image happened to be showing at that moment gets
+# abruptly replaced by a fresh zoomed-in frame. The back-and-forth loop
+# doesn't eliminate that (a server-side re-render always restarts at tick 0
+# regardless), but ending exactly where it started means the animation also
+# loops seamlessly on-device between refreshes.
+#
+# Duration is intentionally short (a handful of seconds each way), not the
+# ~60s round-trip originally tried: on the real device/server, a fresh
+# render replaces the still-playing animation well before a minute-long
+# cycle can complete, so only the outbound half (zoom out) was ever visible
+# and it never appeared to "zoom back in". A short loop guarantees at least
+# one full out-and-back cycle plays before that happens.
 #
 # Art is rendered oversized (45x45, vs. the 32x32 display slot) since
 # animation.Scale has no visible effect on a widget whose declared size
@@ -110,18 +115,11 @@ def main(config):
 # animation.Scale(1.0, 1.0) -- so scaling *down* from there shrinks the
 # already-fitted image further, exposing background outside its bounds
 # (the black border). Scaling *up* only ever crops further into the image,
-# which is always safe. animation.Scale's pivot defaults to the top-left
-# corner (confirmed empirically; an explicit `origin` param had no effect
-# at all, so isn't used here) -- there's no reliable way to zoom into any
-# other corner, so this always zooms into the top-left. Duration 1200
-# ticks x the default 50ms/tick = 60s round-trip (30s in, 30s out);
-# verified empirically that a slower zoom compresses *smaller*, not
-# larger, since more adjacent ticks become pixel-identical at this
-# resolution -- well under the 460KB device limit.
+# which is always safe.
 ART_SIZE = 45
 ART_SLOT = 32
-ART_ZOOM_SCALE = 1.4  # how far in to zoom on the top-left corner
-ART_ZOOM_DURATION = 1200  # 60s at the default 50ms/tick
+ART_ZOOM_SCALE = 1.4  # how far in to zoom
+ART_ZOOM_DURATION = 200  # 10s round-trip (5s in, 5s out) at the default 50ms/tick
 
 def _art_widget(art_bytes):
     art = render.Image(src = art_bytes, width = ART_SIZE, height = ART_SIZE)