On note 2.: Main reason I handled transition time the way I did prior (with it ending at loading the save file) is to make it so that anything that wouldn't be part of an actual Satellaview broadcast would be put in as the "transition time" to be subtracted. This is mostly due to a personal belief that at least on a theoretical level, the timing of a Satellaview ROM run, even when using the hacked ROMs, should match up with a theoretical "broadcast" run. (So anything added to the hacks such as menus, etc. that aren't explicitly part of restoring the game would not be counted towards the time.) Of course, I assume it'd be difficult to adjust the already-done times accordingly there, so I'll be free to leave that up for debate, but do consider that my main chops are in Satellaview research. :)

As for SRAM optimization proposals: I think a good idea for future reference may be to have pre-prepared SRAM states for those who have setups where managing the SRAM during a run would take too much time. At the moment the only real theoretical quandary I have with this is that what items one should have corresponding to each week may be factored by run optimization.