Oh, on the topic of title-safe areas, I suppose I should mention this now. Vertically, this project’s subtitles extend to about the 85% mark by the standard I’m using horizontally, which would usually indicate I’m getting a little close to the top and bottom edges of the frame. However, since most displays would have black bars above and below the frame, there’s zero risk of overscan eating up the top and bottom frame edges, even on the worst CRT’s, which is a risk on the left and right. Heck, even 21:9 displays would have small black bars along the top and bottom. So I think I simply have more leeway in the vertical direction, plus I just really like the subtitles at that position, so I’m inclined to leave vertical placement alone, and only really attempt any enforcement of the title-safe area horizontally.

EDIT: Actually just checked SMPTE ST 2046-1, and 90% is the new title-safe for HD, even though most video editors still define it as 80%, which was the old SD standard. So I still try to compress things down to 80%, because frankly that does still look better, but I’m not at all concerned with the vertical placement now.